[14] The gnomon was known to the Chinese in the 5th century B.C., and reached the Greeks (Anaximander) through Babylon. Pytheas, as far as known, was the first to utilize it for the determination of a latitude.
[15] If, with W. Dörpfeld, we assume an Attic stadium of 200 steps (500 ft.) to be equal to 164 metres, a degree of 700 stad. would be equal to 114,800 metres, its actual length according to modern measurement being 110,808 metres.
[16] Climata based on the length of the longest day were introduced by Hippocrates (c. 400 B.C.). Zones similar to those already drawn out for the celestial sphere were first introduced by the Pythagoreans. Parmenides of Elea (544-430 B.C.) distinguishes five of these zones, viz. a torrid zone, between the tropics of summer and winter, which was uninhabitable on account of heat; two frigid zones, uninhabitable on account of cold, and two intermediate temperate zones.
[17] Celestial globes were made much earlier than terrestrial ones. In the museum of Naples there is a celestial globe, 2 metres in diameter, supported upon the shoulders of an Atlas, which E. Heis, judging by the constellations engraved upon it (Atlas coelestis novus, Bonn, 1872) judges to date from the 4th century B.C. It may even be the work of Eudoxus (d. 386 B.C.) the famous astronomer. Aratus of Soli in Cilicia, in his poetical Prognostics of Stars and the World, refers to a globe in his possession. Archimedes, the famous mathematician, had a celestial globe of glass, in the centre of which was a small terrestrial globe. Hero of Alexandria (284-221 B.C.), the ingenious inventor of “Hero’s Fountain,” is believed to have possessed a similar apparatus. The celestial globe of Hipparchus still existed in the Alexandrian library in the time of Ptolemy, who himself refers to globes in his Almagest, as also in the Geography. Leontius, who wrote a book on the manufacture of globes (first published at Basel in 1539), is identified by Fiorini with a bishop of Neapolis (Cyprus) of the time of Constantine III. (642-668).
[18] The oldest MS. of Ptolemy’s Geography is found in the Vatopedi monastery of Mt Athos. It dates from the 12th or 13th century and was published by Victor Langlois in 1867. For the latest edition we are indebted to the late Carl Müller (Paris, 1883-1906) to whom we are likewise indebted for an edition of the Geographi graeci minores (1855-1861).
[19] Facsimiles of it have been published by Desjardins(1869-1871), by K. Miller (1886), who ascribes it to Castorius, A.D. 366, and by others.
[20] R. Gough, British Topography (London 1768). His “Histories” are published in Rerum brit. scriptores XL. and LVII. 1866-1869.
[21] M. Bittner, Die topogr. Capital des ind. Seespiegels (Vienna, 1897).
[22] E. G. Ravenstein, Martin Behaim, his Life and his Globe (London, 1908). On the original only equator, ecliptics, tropics, polar circles and one meridian 80° to the west of Lisbon are laid down.
[23] See fig. 23, Catalan Map of the World (1375).