Description:
James Wilson of Bradford, Vermont, created the first commercially available globes in America. Beginning in 1810, he produced and sold terrestrial and celestial globes for home and classroom use, advertising them as superior American-made products. James Wilson "New American Terrestrial Globe," dated 1811. 13" terrestrial table globe on curly maple stand. Twelve engraved gores and two polar calottes pasted on a core of papier-mache and plaster to form a 13” diameter globe. Sitting in a tiger maple stand with turned legs and stretchers, supported on a horizon ring bearing a printed zodiacal circle. Brass meridian ring, polar indicators and other fittings. Condition: Minor stains, diameter 13", overall 18" x 18" Conserved at Green Dragon Bindery. James Wilson (1763-1855) is important to the history of cartography for having manufactured and sold the first American globes. He was born in Londonderry, NH, in 1763, and trained as a farmer and blacksmith. In 1796 he moved to Bradford, in Orange County, Vermont. The story goes that he dropped by to see a friend at Dartmouth College and saw a pair of celestial and terrestrial globes through the keyhole of a locked door. Glimpsing the globes fired his curiosity and fortified his desire to duplicate them. Undoubtedly, he was caught up in one of the fascinations of the day. With England, France, Spain, and the new United States struggling over which country would control various parts of North America, geography became a topic of conversation. James Wilson faced several obstacles in creating his globes – he lacked knowledge in the areas of geography, astronomy, and cartography. To learn about geography, Wilson sold some farm produce and livestock to purchase the 18-volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica or Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences (third edition) for $130. He then learned the basics of engraving and printing from Amos Doolittle in Connecticut. With his training as a blacksmith, Wilson cast the hardware for the globes and constructed his own lathes, tools, and presses. He also made his own ink, glue, varnish, and designed his own maps and gore patterns. But he still had a lot to learn about building globes. He spent the next year engraving a world map on a copper plate, only to discover that he did not know how to get a true proportion of the meridians upon a globular surface. Wilson then solicited the advice of Jedidiah Morse, the “father of American Geography” in Charlestown, MA, for assistance. By that time Morse had five geography books in print. Morse told him the copperplate could not be salvaged. Wilson went back to work on his globe making techniques while balancing his scarce resources with his growing family. Around 1810, he produced the first globes on paper, pasted on a core of paper mâché and plaster, and suspended in a birch frame with turned legs. A stray page of an account book documents that he sold a globe to Mr. Wellman and Judge Niles in 1810. He opened a shop to manufacture these globes and sell them to his neighbors and local schools. Wilson charged $50 for a pair of globes – celestial and terrestrial. Each one signed by J. Wilson, Vermont. This is a dated 1811 version with a tiger maple stand. According to 2022 research by Amanda Gustin of the Vermont Historical Society, the printed information on the zodiacal ring (earlier printed rings had pictorial images of the different zodiac symbols, the later examples have the printed names of the zodiac) was changed when the company set up a factory in Albany in the late 1810s. With the assistance of his sons John, Samuel, and, later, David, J. Wilson & Sons began producing globes on a commercial scale.
Label Text:
James Wilson is important to the history of cartography for manufacturing and selling the first American globes in 1810. Without any formal schooling, he taught himself geography and astronomy using the Encyclopedia Brittanica and received assistance and advice from engraver Amos Doolittle and geographer Jedediah Morse. Wilson made his own ink, glue, and varnish, designed his own maps and gores (projections like the wedges of an orange), and engraved his own copper plates. Prized as genteel objects, globes were treasured within the home and as educational tools within the classroom. Globes, maps, and atlases helped to visualize geography better than reading texts. By the 1810s, the practice of teaching geography became part of the formal curricula in the established schools of the northeast. In 1810, Anne Laura Clarke (1788-1861) advertised an education with “charts and maps” at the school she ran out of her father’s home in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Tags:
maps; education Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2022.4 |
