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Tag Archives: cartography

Book of the Week — Atlas céleste de flamsteed…

13 Tuesday Mar 2018

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atlas, cartography, celestial, Edmund Halley, engineer, English, engravings, French, Isaac Newton, Jean Nicolas Fortin, John Flamsteed, maps, Paris, stars


“Newton’s design was to make me come to him, force me to comply with his humors, and flatter him and cry him up as Dr. Halley did. He thought to work me to his ends by putting me to extraordinary charges. Those that have begun to do ill things never blush to do worse to secure themselves. Sly Newton had still more to do and was ready at coining new excuses and pretenses to cover his disingenuous and malicious practices… I met his cunning forecasts with sincere and honest answers and thereby frustrated not a few of his malicious designs. I would not court him, for, honest Sir Isaac Newton (to use his own words) would have all things in his own power, to spoil or sink them; that he might force me to second his designs and applaud him, which no honest man would do nor could do; and, God be thanked, I lay under no necessity of doing.” – John Flamsteed

Atlas céleste de flamsteed…
John Flamsteed (1646-1719)
Paris: Chez F. G. Deschamp [et chez] l’auteur, 1776
Second edition in French, the third edition after the first in English of 1729
QB65 F5 1776

John Flamsteed was England’s first Astronomer Royal. He was a lecturer at Gresham College. Flamsteed used a telescope with an aperture smaller than the smallest modern telescope, including those we might give to a child today. Telescopes used by the most casual amateur astronomers have apertures ten times that of Flamsteed’s telescope.

When first published, this altas represented a new era in celestial cartography, recording the 3000 stars John Flamsteed observed using equatorial and ecliptic coordinates. Flamsteed quarreled bitterly with Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley about his findings. His own findings often contradicted those of Christiaan Huygens. The sky was a battleground, fought over with primitive instruments and by the best minds of the day. 

For the French edition, engineer Jean Nicolas Fortin reduced the size of the maps, and fixed the location of the stars for 1780 instead of 1690, the date at which they had been fixed by Flamsteed. Fortin also added new discoveries to this edition. Illustrated with thirty double-page engraved plates.


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Book of the Week – Harmonia Macrocosmica

07 Monday Oct 2013

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Andreas Cellarius, astronomers, astronomy, atlas, burins, cartography, cherubs, compasses, Copernicus, Dutch, engraving, Europe, Galileo, Gerald Valk, gravers, illustrations, Jan Jansson, Pieter Schenck, Pope Paul V, printing press, Ptolemy, transits, Tycho Brahe

Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1661
Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1661
Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1661

Harmonia Macrocosmica
Andreas Cellarius
Amsterdam: Jansson, 1661
Second edition
QB41 C39

The Celestial Atlas of Harmony was published in varying formats in 1660, 1661, 1666, and 1708.  Very few copies of the first edition of 1660 survive.  (One known copy is held by the British Museum). The Harmonia Macrocosmica, a summary of pre-Newtonian astronomy, compares the various cosmological theories up to and of that time, including those of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, and Copernicus.

The geocentric theories of Ptolemy, suggesting that the earth is the center of the universe, are contrasted with those of Copernicus, who put the sun at the center of our solar system. Tycho Brahe’s theory attempted to unify the two. Brahe’s version shows the sun revolving around the earth and the rest of the planets revolving around the sun.

The book also has sections on the Earth’s climate zones, the sizes of the sun, moon, and planets, and the constellations of the zodiac. It is this broad overview of astronomical thought that kept the book from being banned under strictures put in place by Pope Paul V in 1616. These same strictures put Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life after the printing of his Dialogo (1632), which was based on Copernican theory.

Andreas Cellarius was the rector of a college in the northern Netherlands. The printer, Jan Jansson, was one of the preeminent publishers of his time. Both art and science were applied to this production, with discoveries heralded by imaginative images as well as observed fact. Cheerful cherubs, floating over head earnest astronomers hold transits and compasses. The first edition was extremely popular, prompting the second edition.

The second edition of the atlas contains twenty-nine lavishly designed and hand-colored engraved plates, some of the finest examples of seventeenth-century Dutch cartography in existence. The technique of engraving began in ancient times as a way to decorate objects, particularly of metal. After the development of the printing press in Europe in 1450, engraving became a way to create high quality illustrations which retained precise detail, even after multiple impressions. Specialized tools, known as “burins” and “gravers” of various sizes and shapes were used to cut away the surface of a metal plate. The 1708 reissue bears the engraved names of Gerald Valk and Pieter Schenck on each plate, although not one line had been changed.

View more images at the J. Willard Marriott Library Digital Library

alluNeedSingleLine

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Book of the Week – Charta Cosmographica

18 Monday Feb 2013

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cannibals, cartography, cordiform projection, Cuba, Gemma Frisius, Hispaniola, map, mermaids, monsters, Peter Apian, woodblock, zodiac

Charta Cosmpgraphica, 1540

Charta Cosmpgraphica, 1540

Charta Cosmographica
Peter Apian (1495-1552)
Antwerp: s.n., 1540-64
GT3200 1540 A65

This famous heart-shaped world map is based upon a larger 1540 map by Gemma Frisius, a mathematician, cosmographer, cartographer, and physician who prepared the map for Peter Apian’s Cosmographicus Liber. The map first appeared in the Cosmographia of 1544 or 1545. The woodblock is done on a cordiform projection, set in a dramatic surround of clouds, figures and windheads. The cartography shows precise outlines for Africa, South America and the East coast of North America. However, North America is shown as a narrow peninsula – Baccalearium, referring to the nearby cod fishing industry – separated from mainland Asia by a reduced Pacific Ocean. The size of the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola are both grossly exaggerated. Cannibals are depicted in South America. The ugly, cadaverous heads in the South represent what were believed to be plague-bearing southerly winds. Ships, monsters, and mermaids appear in the seas. The signs of the zodiac and Ptolemaic climate zones can be seen in the borders, along with deity figures representing the twelve winds. Despite these fantasies, Peter Apian is considered a pioneer in the development of astronomical and geographical instruments.

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