Accession No
0438
Brief Description
16-inch portable cloth collapsible ‘umbrella’ terrestrial globe, by John Betts, London, 1880 (c)
Origin
England; London; 115 Strand
Maker
Betts, John
Class
cartography
Earliest Date
1880
Latest Date
1880
Inscription Date
Material
cloth (cotton or silk); metal (iron, brass)
Dimensions
length 725mm; breadth 80mm
Special Collection
Robert Whipple collection
Provenance
Purchased from T.H. Court in 05/1927.
Inscription
‘By the Queens
Royal letters Patent
BETTS
NEW PORTABLE
TERRESTRIAL GLOBE
compiled from
THE LATEST AND BEST AUTHORITIES
London John Betts 115 The Strand’
Description Notes
16-inch portable cloth collapsible ‘umbrella’ terrestrial globe, by John Betts, London, c. 1880.
(?) Glazed cotton/silk on collapsible iron frame with clip umbrella fastening. 8 ‘gores’. Brass suspension shackle.
References
Katie Taylor; 'Portable 'umbrella' globe'; Explore Whipple Collections online article; Whipple Museum of the History of Science; University of Cambridge; 2009: https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/explore-whipple-collections/globes/portable-umbrella-globe
Events
Description
This umbrella globe was a common design found in nineteenth-century English schoolrooms. This example was made by the London globe-maker John Betts (died c. 1863). Betts was a specialist maker of educational products, who first produced the ingenious “umbrella” globe around 1850. By using a collapsible umbrella mechanism to support printed cloth sections, Betts was able to market a globe that was both large enough to use for teaching, but also portable when collapsed. The educationalists Richard Edgeworth (1744–1817) and his daughter Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) make reference to an inflatable globe in their Practical Education (1798) when they wrote: ‘To assist our pupils in geography we prefer a globe to common maps. Might not a cheap, portable, and convenient globe be made of oiled silk, to be inflated by a common par of bellows?’ Folding globes continued to be published until the 1920’s by George Philip & Son, Ltd.
14/01/2014
Created by: Allison Ksiazkiewicz on 14/01/2014
FM:43481
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