Martin Waldseemüller, The 1507 globular map of the world, courtesy of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, (left), and recreated globe (right).

Waldseemüller made a globe that could be purchased in 1507. To make these, he worked with artisans. First, he created the world map in twelve gores, which was then cut onto a woodblock and prints made (see above, left). Artisans then cut the map in gores away from the paper sheets and pasted them around a ball. They then painted the globe, and a purchaser could have it mounted on a stand. None of the globes have survived, but several copies of the printed gores do. Using a digital facsimile of the globe gores from the James Ford Bell Library copy, we created a digital facsimile by texture mapping a sphere (see above, right).