Volume Ii Part 10 (1/2)
SPHERES, according to the Ptolomaick System, 8 Inches Diameter.
Price 1l. 10s.”
[115] The following works may be cited for further reference to these early Chinese globes of Peking: Wylie, A. Mongol astronomical instruments in Peking. (In: Chinese Researches, Shantung, 1897, Part III, pp. 1-20.); Le Comte, L. D. Memories and Observations. London, 1699; Du Halde, J. B. Description geographique de l'empire de la China. Paris, 1735; Yule, H. Travels of Marco Polo. London, 1893.
Vol. I, pp. 448-456, with four ill.u.s.trations.
[116] Carton, Abbe C. Biographique sur le Pere Ferdinand Verbiest.
Bruges, 1839; Thompson, J. Ill.u.s.trations of China and its people.
London, 1874. Vol. iv.
Chapter XII
Globes and Globe Makers of the First Half of the Eighteenth Century--from Delisle to Ferguson
Activities of Guillaume Delisle.--Jean Dominique Ca.s.sini and his reforms.--Vincenzo Miot.--The globes of Gerhard and Leonhard Valk.--Activities of John Senex.--Nicolas Bion.--The armillary sphere of Carmelo Cartilia.--Mattheus Seutter of Augsburg.--Robert Morden.--Jean Antoine Nollet.--Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr of Nurnberg.--Terrestrial globe of Cusani.--Terrestrial globes of Siena.--The work of the monk Pietro Maria da Vinchio.--James Ferguson of Scotland.
Among the numerous globe makers of the eighteenth century, there are few, if any, ent.i.tled to rank with Blaeu or Hondius, with Greuter or Coronelli of the seventeenth. There was much written during the period, it is true, on the value of globes in geographical and astronomical studies, and there were many globes constructed, of which a very considerable number still have a place in our libraries, museums, and private collections.
With the improvements in scientific map construction, improvements amounting to a complete reformation, and ushered in during the closing years of the seventeenth century and the opening years of the eighteenth, by such men as Riccioli, Picard, Ca.s.sini, and Delisle, not to mention a number of their distinguished immediate predecessors and contemporaries, the last above-named working through the patronage of the Royal Academy of Science of France,[117]--with these improvements there appears to have been a decline in the relative value which the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries set upon globes. Once regarded as an essential part of a seaman's instruments for use in navigation, they gave place, just as the portolan chart of the earlier day gave place, to an improved sailor's chart. Globe makers, however, of this period, such as Delisle and Bion, as Gerhard and Leonhard Valk, as Vaugondy and Fortin, as Ferguson and Adams, have an honorable place in the history of globes and of globe construction.
France was leading at the turn of the seventeenth century in the field of geographical and astronomical science, a fact in part due to the generous subsidy allowed by royalty. Guillaume Delisle (1675-1726), perhaps the greatest among the reformers active in these years in improving the methods of map construction, was a native of Paris, in which city he pa.s.sed practically his entire life.[118] The father, Claude Delisle, famous as a teacher of history and geography, inspired in his son a particular love for the latter subject, or perhaps this may the better be referred to as a love for historical geography. The period was one in which there was much emphasis placed upon the relations.h.i.+p existing between the two branches of study, and it is interesting to note that this phase of geographical study is again coming into favor.[119]
Doubtless it was in part the influence of Ca.s.sini's teaching which found expression in Delisle's lifelong efforts to eliminate the numerous errors which he had found existing in the maps of his day, efforts which even in his early life won for him distinction as a map maker. In the year 1700, when he was but twenty-five years of age, there appeared under his name a world map and likewise maps of the several continents.[120] In these there was exhibited much originality, they being constructed in the main on the basis of astronomical observations which had been made at the Royal
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 118a. Terrestrial Globe of Johann Ludovicus Andreae, 1717.]
Academy. Hitherto the Ptolemaic cartography had exerted an overpowering influence. Errors in the location of places still remained on the maps, attributable in large part to that ancient cosmographer, who continued for so long a period a most influential teacher of geography and map making after the renaissance of his 'Cosmographia' in the early fifteenth century. Among the greatest errors still to be found in the maps in Delisle's day was the excessive length given to the Mediterranean, this being about sixty-two degrees of longitude instead of its correct length, which is about forty-two, and the extension of Asia much too far to eastward, together with other errors following upon these.[121] Delisle, having the support of the Royal Academy, and of the King himself, was able to carry through the reforms in map construction, the fundamental principles of which, it is true, had been suggested before his day, based upon such astronomical observations as were those of Ca.s.sini, Picard, and La Hire, wherein there had been an attempt to determine the exact location in longitude of important places on the earth's surface and wherein they had been aided by the use of the telescope. Through the employment of this instrument they were able to fix the exact time of eclipses and determine the time of the transit of the moons of Jupiter.[122] In the 'Journal des Savants' of the year 1700 is given a letter addressed to the engraver and map maker, Nolin, and signed ”Delisle.” In this there is reference to a ma.n.u.script globe of the year 1696, the implication being that Guillaume was its author.[123]
The probability is that we have here a letter written by Claude, the father, it being hardly probable that the son drafted a globe map at the age of twenty-one. We, however, know, as before stated, that he achieved great distinction through the maps he published in the year 1700, when he was but twenty-five, and we are also informed that even at the age of eight he attracted attention to himself through the maps he drew to ill.u.s.trate ancient history.
In the same year that he published his epoch-making maps he issued the first edition of his globes, those having a diameter of about 31 cm. and those having a diameter of about 15 cm. The globe b.a.l.l.s were constructed of papier-mache covered with plaster over which were pasted the gore maps, each map composed of twelve parts with the usual polar discs. The engraver, we are told, in a brief legend on the terrestrial globe, was Carolus Simonneau, ”Car. Simon. del. et sculpsit.” On the larger of the terrestrial globes is the t.i.tle legend ”Globe terrestre dresse sur les observations de l'Academie Royale des sciences et autres memoires,” and a dedication reading, ”a Son Altesse Royale Monseigneur Le Duc de Chartres. Par son tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur G. De l'Isle Geographie. Berey sculpsit.”
The celestial globe bears the t.i.tle, ”Globe celeste calcule pour l'an 1700. Sur les observations les plus recents. Par. G. De l'Isle Geographe,” and is dedicated ”a Son Altesse Royale Monseigneur le Duc de Chartres. Par son tres humble et tres obeissant Serviteur De l'Isle,”
with the following reference to the privilege ”a Paris Chez l'Auteur sur le Quai de l'Horologe a la Couronne de Diamans. Avec Privilege du Roy pour 20 ans. 1700.”
While it has not been possible to obtain a detailed description of Delisle's globe maps, they are referred to as giving practically the same information as his plane maps, many of the latter to be found in our important library collections, and cannot be considered rare.[124]
The several constellations which he has represented on his celestial globes are those of Ptolemy to which have been added two in the northern hemisphere and thirteen in the southern, and the year chosen for the representation of the position of the stars is 1700. In general the names chosen for the several constellations are French, though a few are in Latin.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 118. Terrestrial Globe of Guillaume Delisle, 1700.]
A pair of Delisle's globes may be found in the Konigliches Museum of Ca.s.sel, dated 1709; a pair dated 1700 in the Museo di Strumenti Antichi of Florence, and a terrestrial globe dated 1700 in the Real Biblioteca of Madrid (Fig. 118).
Weigel, Castlemaine, Coronelli, and Treffler, as has been noted, represented a tendency in globe construction in their day which we have referred to as the ultrapractical. It was impossible that their ideas should find anything like a general acceptance and approval. A globe eleven or fifteen feet in diameter, in the better judgment of astronomers and geographers, could not be counted as possessing superior scientific value, and globes of such dimensions seem only to have won the praise of the novelty-loving contemporaries, and the same general criticism may be pa.s.sed upon the smaller globes of Castlemaine and Treffler. Perhaps, however, one may well add that in all this a desire was expressing itself for improvement in globe construction.
In this connection attention may be called to a plan for reform in globe making proposed by Jean Dominique Ca.s.sini (1625-1712), one of the most famous astronomers of the period.[125] Ca.s.sini was a native of Perinaldo, Italy (Fig. 119). Early in life he became interested in the study of astronomy, and at the age of twenty-five received an appointment as professor of this science at the University of Bologna.
Recommended by Colbert as one worthy his royal master's patronage, Ca.s.sini in 1669 accepted the invitation of Louis XIV to fill the chair of astronomy in the College de France, a position once held by Pierre Ga.s.sendi.[126] In 1671 he became the director of the Royal Observatory of Paris, a position held in succession by four generations of his family. To him we owe the determination of the rotation periods of Jupiter, Venus, and Mars, the discovery of four of Saturn's satellites and the determination of their periods of revolution. He devoted much time and study to the problem of the obliquity of the ecliptic, to the precession of the equinoxes,[127] and to the determination of the lat.i.tude and longitude of places.[128] This precession, he found, could not be represented on a celestial globe such as. .h.i.therto had been constructed, and he set himself to the task of devising one on a new plan. The position of the constellations, as indicated on the ordinary celestial globe, he, as others, noted would soon be found to be inaccurate. What he proposed was a globe capable of such adjustment as to obviate this difficulty; in other words, he proposed the construction of a globe by means of which this perpetual change might be indicated, or one which would serve to indicate the position of the several constellations at any time, past, present or future.
It was to Nicolas Bion, map and globe maker of Paris that the astronomer Ca.s.sini entrusted the manufacture of such an instrument, and it is from him that we have a brief description of its peculiar features.[129] He tells us that the sphere on which the several constellations were represented was enclosed within a number of armillae representing the celestial circles, that is, the colures, the ecliptic, the tropics, the equator, and the polar circles. This inner sphere was attached to a meridian circle at the poles of its equator, within which circle it turned as the ordinary sphere, and it was also attached to the same meridian at the poles of the ecliptic. Around this polar axis of the ecliptic the sphere, with the attached meridian, could be made to revolve, the pole of the equator in its revolution tracing a circle having a radius of twenty-three and a half degrees, a complete revolution being made to represent a period of twenty-five thousand two hundred years, or the time required for the complete precession of the equinox according to his reckoning. This pole in its circle of revolution could be immovably set at any desired point to represent any time past or future, and the sphere then revolved around the pole of the equator. The several stars or constellations could thus be represented in their proper position for the time selected. Bion's reference to this globe seems to a.s.sure us that he completed its construction, yet no trace of it has been left, unless we have such in a record to be found in the history of the Royal Academy for the year 1727. In this we find that a globe constructed on the principle laid down by Ca.s.sini was presented to the Academy, in the year designated, by Outhier, a priest of Besancon.[130] This globe, which has disappeared, had the double movements, one about the axis of the equator and one about the axis of the ecliptic. It was a globe which would represent the daily and annual movements of the sun, the difference between the true and the mean time, the movements of the moon and its phases, the eclipses, and the pa.s.sing of the several fixed stars across the meridian.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 119. Portrait of Jean Dominique Ca.s.sini.]