[116] Carton, Abbé C. Biographique sur le Père Ferdinand Verbiest. Bruges, 1839; Thompson, J. Illustrations 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 Cassini 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 Nürnberg.—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, entitled 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, Cassini, 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 passed 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 relationship 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 Cassini’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 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 Cassini, 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 manuscript 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 illustrate ancient history.