Accession No
6237
Brief Description
6-inch lunar (Moon) globe, produced by Nicolas Camille Flammarion after the map of Casimir Marie Gaudibert, made by E. Bertaux, French, c. 1895
Origin
France; Paris
Maker
Flammarion, Nicolas Camille [publisher] Bertaux, E. [maker]
Class
astronomy
Earliest Date
1887
Latest Date
1900
Inscription Date
Material
wood (unknown type, ebonized); paint; paper; metal (brass)
Dimensions
325mm high; 150mm diameter globe
Special Collection
Provenance
Purchased with Wh. 6238 from Tesseract, Box 151, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706, U.S.A. from 07/07/2008.
Inscription
GLOBE
DE LA LUNE
Dresse sous la direction de
CAMILLE FLAMMARION
Par C. M. Gaudibert
E. BERTAUX Editeur a Paris
Echelle
Description Notes
6-inch lunar (Moon) globe, produced by Camille Flammarion after the map of Casimir Marie Gaudibert, made by E. Bertaux, French, c. 1895
Globe comprises of 12 gores, printed black on tan, with the sphere mounted on a turned ebonized wood stand with brass fittings. Major features (such as ‘seas’) are named in French, while minor features (such as craters) are numbered, with the name corresponding to each of the 343 numbered features listed on the ‘back’ of the globe. Details of the Moon’s size and orbit are also given. “Terminator” and “twilight” lines are drawn in, showing the extremities of the earth-bound observer’s view (in all, 59% of the Moon’s surface is mappable from Earth). The equator is marked with a ring.
Complete.
References
Events
Description
The famous French populariser of science Nicolas Camille Flammarion (1842–1925) produced this globe at the end of the 19th century. It is based on the 63.5cm diameter map of the moon produced by the astronomer Casimir Marie Gaudibert (1823–1901) in 1887.
Because one side of the moon always faces the earth, it was not possible until the Space-Age in the twentieth century to chart the far ‘dark side’ of the moon. As such, 41% of this globe shows no map features, and has been used instead by Flammarion to list the names of 343 features on the Moon’s near surface that are labelled on the globe with numbers. Flammarion also uses the blank ‘dark side’ to list details of the Moon’s size and orbit.
04/12/2008
Created by: Joshua Nall on 04/12/2008
FM:46710
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