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The 2nd-century CE Roman marble sculpture of Atlas holding up a celestial globe known as the Farnese Atlas is the oldest extant statue of Atlas, a Titan of Greek mythology. It's also the oldest known representation of the celestial spheres and the classical constellations.
And then in 1492, the same year Columbus first sailed across the Atlantic to reach the New World, German cartographer Martin Behaim created his Erdapfel, the world's oldest known terrestrial globe, which he produced for the Imperial City of Nuremberg.
According to Strabo, an ancient Greek geographer of great stature, the earliest known globe of the Earth was made around 150 BCE by a man known as Crates of Mallus. While it didn't survive antiquity, the image here is what the globe might have looked like as imagined by a 20th-century artist.
Behaim made his "apple globe" by laminating a linen ball in two halves, reinforced with wood and overlaid with a map painted on gores (sectors of a curved surface). Pictured is a modern depiction of the Eastern hemisphere of his globe.
This is the Western hemisphere of Behaim's globe. The Americas are not included, as Columbus returned to Spain no sooner than March 1493. The Behaim-Globe is on permanent display at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
Three years later, in 1510, the Hunt-Lennox Globe was unveiled. This hollow red copper globe is believed to be the first to feature the mariners' warning Hic Sunt Dracones, or "Here be dragons." The historic globe resides in New York Public Library. The globe's many admirers include Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards (pictured).
One of the most intriguing stories in the history of the globe is the origin of the so-called Ostrich Egg Globe. Believed to date back to 1504, it's the oldest globe to depict the New World. What makes it even more compelling is that some scholars believe it could have been made by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Pictured is a plate of the engraving taken from the egg.
The ostrich egg may well have served as a reference for German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, whose 1507 Universalis Cosmographia world map was the first to show the usage of the word America to name a portion of the New World, done so in honor of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
By the late 16th century, however, as more of the planet's surface was being mapped, the manufacture of terrestrial globes had become big business. A "remarkably modern-looking" terrestrial globe of the Earth was constructed during the 1570s by Taqi ad-Din and other Ottoman astronomers at the Constantinople observatory of Taqi ad-Din Here.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) proved that the world is round over 2,000 years ago when the ancient Greek philosopher and polymath noticed the round shadow of the Earth falling onto the Moon during an eclipse.
Nuremburg remained the center of globe manufacturing throughout the 16th century. Amsterdam, Venice, and Paris caught up in the 17th century. By the 18th century, London had also entered the by-now highly lucrative industry. In fact, it became rather fashionable for a gentleman to carry a pocket globe (pictured) along with his pocket watch.
The 1500s also saw beautifully crafted celestial and terrestrial globes quickly become highly desired objets d'art, used more for decorative purposes than for scientific research. This example was made in Austria from partially gilded silver and gilded brass. The clockwork movement is brass and steel.
The Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and geographer Ptolemy (c. 100–c. 170 CE) made an important contribution to the development of the instrument when he described a precise scientific method of fixing the position of a place on a globe by using so-called spherical coordinates (e.g. the longitude and latitude of a place on Earth or the (ecliptic) longitude and latitude for a place in the sky.
For the most part, globes remained the prerogative of privileged and educational elite. But as the 19th century progressed, globes had become familiar objects in schools, colleges, and private homes. Actually, globe kits were readily available—terrestrial and celestial globes could be made from paper gores folded easily into a shell illustrated with a map.
While the production of terrestrial globes gathered pace, the armillary sphere was still in use as a teaching instrument to demonstrate the movement of the heavenly bodies.
The word globe, by the way, comes from the Latin word globus, meaning "sphere." Pictured is a 1539 illustration of the geocentric (Earth-centered) system of the Universe showing Aristotle's four elements surrounded by a sphere of fixed stars and spheres of planets.
The scientific and astronomical advances made by the ancient Greeks and Romans were promptly forgotten as society slipped into the Dark Ages. The Earth was again perceived as a flat disc with a river ocean surrounding it.
It was Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) who formulated a model of the Universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center (the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos had put forward a similar notion 13 centuries earlier, but his astronomical ideas were largely ignored).
Copernicus was dismissed as a fantasist. Instead, it took Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) to declare that the Earth did, in fact, revolve around the Sun.
Galileo's radical announcement raised eyebrows, not least within the ruling Church. He was charged with heresy and hauled up in front of the Inquisition. Under threat of torture and certain death, Galileo was forced to publicly recant his findings.
But as the Renaissance progressed and new lands were being mapped by intrepid mariners during the so-called Age of Discovery, it became clear that the Earth did indeed revolve in orbit around the Sun, and that it was anything but flat. English physicist and astronomer Isaac Newton proved as much mathematically shorty after Galileo's death.
Meanwhile, the planispheric astrolabe served as an ancient astronomical computer for solving problems relating to time and the position of the Sun and stars in the sky. This example dates back to 11th-century Persia.
Later, the spherical astrolabe, a variation of both the astrolabe and the armillary sphere, appeared during the early Middle Ages, invented by astronomers in the Islamic world. Pictured is the only complete example of a spherical astrolabe, created in 1480 CE. Its spherical design mirrors that of Crates'.
The first manufacturer of globes in the United States was James Wilson. He opened the first geographic globe factory in the country in 1813. With their eyes forever on world affairs, no US president worth his salt would be seen without a globe, including Theodore Roosevelt.
But it's perhaps a child's mind that is truly captivated by a globe. Peering at the Earth conjures up notions of having the world at your fingertips, and all the possibilities that feeling evokes.
Sources: (Omniterrum) (National Geographic) (Open Culture) (Studia Islamica)
See also: Charting the history of maps, from Imago Mundi to Google
A globe was famously depicted in a scene from Charlie Chaplin's 1940 movie 'The Great Dictator.'
But they still had specialist applications. Here, American astronaut John Glenn concentrates on a celestial training device (globe) during training in the Aeromedical Laboratory at Cape Canaveral in 1961.
Back in the real world, the development of radio-based navigation techniques in the 1940s and '50s meant that for the most part globes were no longer used for navigation.
Technological advances in the 20th century acted on globes in a variety of ways. Globe design, for example, became bigger and bolder. Here, a globe of 6 ft (1.8 m) radius is seen in 1930 being constructed for London's Geological Museum.
And the move towards large-scale production of globes over the course of the 20th century and into the current century has seen models such as Eartha, the world's largest rotating and revolving globe, still able to capture the imagination of the public. Eartha is located within the former headquarters of the DeLorme mapping corporation in Yarmouth, Maine.
The globe today is symbolic of the world's many nations. In this 2007 photograph, performers are dressed in globe costumes representing different countries during the Opening Ceremony for the XV Pan American Games at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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Rounding up the history of the globe
The evolution of the spherical model of Earth
LIFESTYLE Earth
Globes stand as among the most ancient scientific instruments known. Indeed, written evidence suggests that people have used globes to model the world around them since antiquity. A globe serves a purpose similar to a map. But because it is spherical, or ball-shaped, it can represent surface features, directions, and distances more accurately than a flat map. In fact, they proved an essential tool when mapping the world during the 15th century. And today, a globe still provides educators with a valuable teaching aid. So, just how did this centuries-old sphere become a global success?
Click through and round up the history of the globe.