British Pathé – The Map Room

The Tellurometer, with a Girl to Help

Published on 14 October 2022 by Jonathan Crowe

To start off your weekend, here’s a 1961 clip from British Pathé depicting the surveying and mapmaking technologies of the era. [Massimo]

Globemaking Films

Published on 20 November 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

This short film on globemaking from 1955 has been making the social media rounds:

Compare it to this short film from 1949:

It’s nearly identical in its turns of phrase and factoids, though there are slightly different emphases. Though the firm is unnamed, it’s clearly the same one: it’s even the same guy doing the varnishing.

These films fascinate me because they describe a kind of globemaking—layers of plaster, paper globe gores, and varnish—that I don’t think happens any more. There are some similarities to Bellerby’s globemaking methods, but Bellerby’s underlying globe isn’t a plaster shell. And most of us don’t have the money for a Bellerby globe: if we have a globe, it’s almost certainly a Replogle. As this short video from the Chicago History Museum reveals, Replogle’s globes are a combination of paper, cardboard and glue: