JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The birds'-eye-view has always been of interest on this blog--particularly those that were pre-flight, when the iteration of distance and proportion and perspective were adventures in logic and design and mathematics--and imagination.
The example below is from the upper left corner bit of a cordiform wall map of he world, a massive and old 4'x6' effort, which was designed by Caspar Vopell (a map and globe maker, and a professor of mathematics at the University of Cologne) and printed in 1558, and was mostly the result of the map-maker's projection.
The map of course is spectacular, and the imagination and planning and vast expertise that went into the depiction of North America was impressive--staggering even. It was an enormous leap of faith, that showed all of the new discoveries, stretching from Greenland to northern Florida, around part of the Gulf Coast, across the Southwest and California, and then on to, well, Asia. Vopell depicted the west of North America as a part of Asia--and that according to Charles V, who collected/received information of all sorts of new discoveries and voyages.
This is the detail from the full map:
[Source: John Carter Brown Library, here.]
It may be of interest here to exhibit Vopell's gore sections of his 1536 globe featuring North America--it is not a "birds'-eye" though it is very early.
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