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In the early years of the Maryland colony, Lord Baltimore's name referred to his estates, an entire county, and a port town that would one day become the third largest city in the United States... 30 miles northeast of its current location.
In my previous post about independent cities and the counties that encircle them, I wrote about how the nation's largest independent city, Baltimore, Maryland, is surrounded by a county of the same name. Baltimore City and Baltimore County, while once united, have had separate governments since 1851. Marylanders owe the popular use of this name, as well as the name of their state, to their colonial founder.
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, had a big life change in 1632. His father George Calvert (1st Lord Baltimore) died that year, causing him to inherit a colonial grant in the Americas that George had just secured from King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The colony was to be called Maryland, after the king's wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. Before this turn of events, "Baltimore" had been a noble title in Ireland, associated with one family and principally one location. Now, it was going trans-Atlantic.
If you look at the map below, you can see the situation as rendered in the 1670s by prolific English cartographer John Speed. Settlers under Lord Baltimore's charter first arrived in 1634, encountering the Virginia colony and gradually making their way north up the Chesapeake Bay, eventually reaching the Susquehanna River. You can clearly see these bodies of water on the map, which is oriented with west at the top, but you can also see the prominence of the Calvert family's names on the Maryland coast. There's Calverton County (now Calvert County), followed by Anne Arundel County and the city of Arundelton (now Annapolis), named for Cecil Calvert's wife, Ann Arundell. (The spelling of her name was varied even not long after her lifetime, and has shifted further into the current form of the county name.) Next, we see Baltimore County, as well as Baltimore Town, and across the Susquehanna, "Baltimore M," which may stand for "manor." As we approach the Eastern Shore, we see Caecil M and Caecil County (now Cecil County). If you know your Maryland geography, it might immediately jump out to you that Baltimore County is not quite this large anymore - as of 1773, Harford County sits between the eastern limit of Baltimore County and western limit of Cecil County. And if, like me, you're quite familiar with Baltimore City, you'll see that Baltimore Town is not the Baltimore of today!
Current-day Baltimore is located at the mouth of the Patapsco River, but on this map Baltimore Town appears well north of the Patapsco by about 30 miles, between the Bush and Susquehanna Rivers. The Speed map is a prominent early example, but I've noticed Baltimore in the northern location on maps from our collection almost through the end of the 18th century. (Stay tuned for another example.) As I briefly mentioned in my independent cities post, there was indeed an "Old Baltimore Town" established in 1661 at this northern site, when the seat of power in newly established (in 1659-60) Baltimore County was closer to its borders with Pennsylvania. Eventually, it lost its political importance to the "new" Baltimore Town that had grown around the economic powerhouse of the port of Baltimore, which was established in 1706. The new Baltimore Town was incorporated in 1729, became the new county seat in 1768, and was incorporated as Baltimore City in 1796.
Why did one Baltimore fade and another go gangbusters? There are probably some factors that have been lost to history which explain why, but one likely reason appears right on the maps: geographic advantage. Even on the 1670s John Speed map, before it was economically significant, the Patapsco River stands out. It's very wide, and has several branches that stretch further inland like small fingers, which gives a visual tip-off that it would be good for shipping. This fact becomes even clearer on later maps once the area was better surveyed by locals, such as this one.
On this 1755 map of Virginia, Maryland, and other neighboring states, the Patapsco River appears not only very large but also as stretching very far west and inland. This geographic feature was crucial to Baltimore's success, as the western-most port on the eastern seaboard. The port's inland reach made it perfect for 18th and 19th-century waterfront businesses and easily accessible to export farmers in Pennsylvania and Ohio. To this day, the Port of Baltimore is one of the busiest ports in the United States and can accommodate much larger ships than many commercial ports can, as we were all reminded so poignantly after the Key Bridge collapse last year.
Oddly enough, while this 1755 map still has Baltimore in the old location - presumably from being made with information that was slightly out of date - it does foreshadow the significance of the port and new city, because it shows the location of the Baltimore Iron Works. Not only did the new Baltimore port have suitably navigable waterways for reaching inland business, the area around it was also rich in valuable natural resources for shipping back to the British Isles, such as timber from then-vast forests and something that would also make Baltimore wealthy well into the 20th century: iron ore deposits.
The Baltimore Iron Works started in 1731, apparently early enough and with enough of a splash for it to be captured on the 1755 map, even as the mapmakers missed the news about the city's changing location. It was the second iron works in the Maryland colony, but the first to be locally owned. It only operated until 1799, but it paved the way for a dozen other companies around Baltimore County, and in 1889, a mill at Baltimore City's Sparrows Point began producing steel. The Sparrows Point mill was bought by Bethlehem Steel and was the largest steel producer in the world by 1954. To read more about Bethlehem Steel's rise, fall, and impact on the local economy around Sparrows Point, see the Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project from the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Eventually, the news about the bustling new Baltimore City did make its way to British cartographers, and its prominence quickly grew in the newly independent nation. During the American Revolution, Baltimore City was a meeting place for the Continental Congress and the home of a militia tasked with suppressing loyalist activities on the Eastern Shore. It was definitely, so to speak, on the map.
The Geography & Map Division recently digitized an important set of maps of Austria-Hungary. In this post, we explore these 19th- and early 20th-century maps and the layers of history and language that they contain.
Are you Austria-hungry for maps of Austria-Hungary? If so, you are in luck! The Geography and Map Division, in collaboration with the Collections Digitization Division, recently completed digitization of a large (and I mean large) set of maps. The new digital collection comprises all editions of all sheets of the Spezialkarte der o¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie, a detailed topographic survey of the country at a 1:75,000 scale, held in the Geography and Map Division for a grand total of 6,346 digital images.
Index map to Spezialkarte der o¨¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. K.u.K. Milita¨rgeographisches Institut, [1875?-1945?]. Geography and Map Division.The bulk of the Spezialkarte was published in Vienna by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's K.u.K. Milita¨rgeographisches Institut. Later sheets were produced by successor agencies in Germany after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I. The sheets in the Geography and Map Division's collections generally date between the 1870s and the 1940s, with multiple editions existing for most sheets.
The dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary existed from 1867 to 1918, a period of considerable change in central and eastern Europe. The empire was multiethnic, with large Hungarian, German, Czech, Jewish, Romanian, Ukrainian, and various other populations. Dozens of languages were spoken daily; this multilingual situation is reflected in the Spezialkarte, which frequently provides translations for place names.
For an example, let's look at the hometown of 20th-century cartographer Erwin Raisz. His obituary in Annals of the Association of American Geographers lists his birthplace as Locse, Hungary. Locse appears on the 1912 edition of sheet 4365 of the Spezialkarte. Beneath the name Locse, the German name for the town appears: Leutschau.
Detail of sheet 4365. Spezialkarte der o¨¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. K.u.K. Milita¨rgeographisches Institut, 1912. Geography and Map Division.
In this 1894 edition, however, Leutschau is given prominence, with the Hungarian Locse and Slovak Levoce appearing in parentheses. Today, the town is located in Slovakia, and can be found on modern maps with the spelling Levoca.
Detail of sheet 4365. Spezialkarte der o¨¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. K.u.K. Milita¨rgeographisches Institut, 1894. Geography and Map Division.
Trying to locate a place name within Austria-Hungary is often not straightforward; different languages may have been used more at different times, or authorities may refer to a German or Hungarian version of a place name while inhabitants called it something else in the local language. Genealogists with documents referencing an ancestor’s birthplace in “Austria” may in fact be looking for a town within modern Croatia, Romania, or the Czech Republic. Gazetteers such as the Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon von Oesterreich-Ungarn can help with this, as they often include alternative language versions of place names. Older gazetteers may list the Comitat and Bezirk in which the town is located; modern gazetteers frequently include geographic coordinates. The research guide Cartographic Resources for Genealogical Research: Eastern Europe and Russia has more information on using this map set for genealogical research.
Aside from its usefulness in locating toponyms, the Spezialkarte provides a fascinating snapshot of land use in this part of Europe during the period of coverage. A peek at the map key, found in the beginning of the set, shows the dazzling variety of features depicted on these maps:
Key to symbols. Spezialkarte der o¨¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. K.u.K. Milita¨rgeographisches Institut, [1875?-1945?]. Geography and Map Division.As an example for non-German readers, the section labeled “Culturen” shows the symbols used to distinguish between (from left to right) arable land, meadows and pastures, vineyards, hop gardens, rice fields, individual trees and groups of trees, bushes, sheds, forest with cut-throughs, fruit and vegetable gardens, and sand. Myriad symbols are used throughout the maps to indicate natural and human-made features.
As the maps span several decades, interesting comparisons can be made across maps of the same area, with the caveat that use of symbols may have varied over time. For an example, let’s look at the area of Moschendorf, Austria, and Pinkamindszent, Hungary, in 1896 (top) and 1935 (bottom):
Spezialkarte der o¨¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. K.u.K. Milita¨rgeographisches Institut, [1875?-1945?]. Geography and Map Division.Spezialkarte der o¨¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. K.u.K. Milita¨rgeographisches Institut, [1875?-1945?]. Geography and Map Division.The German-named “Allerheiligen” in 1896 becomes Hungarian “Pinkamindszent” in 1935, and gains a railroad and a chapel. Several areas of trees to the east of Moschendorf, labeled “Saroslaki erdo” (Saroslak forest) in the 1896 map, have disappeared by 1935, as has the label. And the change in the symbol for the church in Moschendorf from a circle to a triangle indicates that by 1935 it was being used as a trigonometrical survey point.
With such a wealth of information contained in these maps, we’ve provided multiple ways to access them. In addition to the digitized sheets, an earlier, experimental digitized version of the set can be downloaded as a dataset from LC Labs. The Austro-Hungarian map set data package contains 4,998 georeferenced TIFF image files (as well as non-georeferenced versions). And, of course, the maps can be viewed in person in the Geography and Map Reading Room.
Among our collection of "bird's-eye view" maps of U.S. and Canadian cities created from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the work Augustus Koch in particular stands out for his artistry, geographic range, and incredible cartographic detail. His maps and historical newspaper clippings relating to his work attest not only to his mastery of the form but the value of panoramic maps in instilling civic pride.
The Panoramic Maps collection is one of the most popular set of maps held in the Geography and Map Division, and the appeal of these maps is not hard to decipher. As described previously here in Worlds Revealed, the panoramic maps are stunning “bird’s-eye view” illustrations of towns and cities across the U.S. and Canada, largely created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Numerous illustrators and cartographers had a hand in producing these works of art over the course of decades, but in exploring the work of a single artist, Augustus Koch, we can appreciate Koch’s particular talents as well as celebrate the maps of this collection as touchstones of civic pride.
Augustus Koch was born in Germany in 1840 and emigrated to Wisconsin, although at what age he did is unclear. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Koch enlisted with a Wisconsin regiment and would eventually serve as an engineering officer to a black regiment of advancing Union troops in Mississippi. It was during the war that Koch first start producing maps. Following the war, he went into business illustrating incredible bird’s-eye views of towns and cities across the growing nation. While some panoramic map artists may be more well known, Koch is considered to be among the most well-traveled, producing over 100 maps in 23 states.
The Geography and Map Division holds at least 41 of Koch’s panoramic works, and choosing just a few of his stunning views to spotlight is a difficult task. His 1875 view of Virginia City, Nevada (shown below) is worth a look, with Mt. Davidson towering over the silver mining boomtown, which is shown here at the height of its population and mining productivity. It is interesting to compare this map with Grafton Taylor Brown’s 1861 view of Virginia City, which captures the town from a different angle and in the town’s early years shortly after the discovery of silver in Mt. Davidson (the Comstock Lode).
Birds eye view of Virginia City, Storey County, Nevada. Koch, Augustus, 1875. Geography and Map Division.
Another of Koch’s finest works is a sweeping view of the present-day independent cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth in Virginia. Produced around 1891, late in Koch’s career, the map shows the region as a bustling center of seafaring. A close-in view of the map reveals the fine details that Koch applied in his work.
Detail of Bird’s eye view of Norfolk, Portsmouth and Berkley, Norfolk Co., Va. Koch, Augustus, 1891. Geography and Map Division.
Koch’s career was so wide reaching that he had the opportunity to illustrate some cities multiple times. His bird’s-eye views of Jacksonville, Florida in 1876 and 1893, for example, are valuable resources for visualizing the growth of the city over the course of 17 years.
Birds eye view of Jacksonville, Fla., Koch, Augustus, 1876, Geography and Map Division.Jacksonville, Florida. Koch, Augustus, 1893. Geography and Map Division.
Koch’s 1896 panoramic view of Kansas City, where he lived for most of his career, is a vibrant masterwork profiling the industrial West Bottoms area of the city. Produced just a few years before Koch’s death, the map conveys the massive scale of the city’s industrial production, from its vast stockyards to its complex array of railway lines.
Panoramic view of the west bottoms, Kansas City, Missouri & Kansas showing stock yards, packing & wholesale houses. Koch, Augustus, c1895. Geography and Map Division.
Newspaper articles from the time confirm that communities were elated with Koch’s exceptional panoramas. A notice in the November 22, 1875 Daily Press and Dakotaian describes a “true to life” Koch bird’s-eye view of Yankton in present-day South Dakota and emphasizes that “the view would make an excellent advertising medium for our real estate men, and copies of it should be hung in every leading hotel in the country.” In encouraging the public to purchase copies of Koch’s view of Portland, Maine, the Portland Daily Press of July 31, 1875 states that “we desire to remind our citizens that this is one of the most valuable, reliable and desirable works of the kind ever presented to the public.”
In the September 9, 1891 edition of the Morning News of Savannah, Georgia, an article celebrates the aforementioned Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia map and notes that Koch would be publishing a view of Savannah in the near future. Promoting local investment in these kinds of projects, the article quotes from the Norfolk Landmark to state:
“The production of the splendid lithograph referred to here, of the bird’s-eye view of the city of Norfolk and vicinity, is overwhelming testimony of the fact that our people need not go to the northern cities for such work as this, as they have been doing almost uniformly. It is about time that it should be recognized that we are able to do our own work, and to those who have had the notion that it is necessary, in order, to get maps, lithographs, etc., well executed, we need only to say: Look at the production here mentioned, and for the future inquire around home before sending your money away.”
It is interesting to consider how these maps, celebrated for showcasing hometown pride and local entrepreneurialism, were created by an artist traveling from coast to coast, from Bangor to Seattle, to carefully translate these ideals into illustrations of towns and cities across the country. From the published praise from the time to the stunning detail and artistry of the maps themselves, it is clear that Augustus Koch made an important impact on the world of bird’s-eye views.
Further Reading:
Did you know that there was another German-born cartographer working in the mid- to late-19th century by the name of Augustus Koch? This Augustus Koch left Germany following the German revolutions of 1848-1849, traveling first to England and then to Auckland, New Zealand. He gained work as a draftsman for an expedition mapping the interior of New Zealand’s North Island, and from there, began a prolific mapmaking and surveying career. The Geography and Map Division holds a facsimile of his 1868 Sketch map of Wairoa and Poverty Bay districts and a 2015 biography Augustus Koch - Mapmaker by Rolf W. Brednich.
Read more about the aforementioned Grafton Taylor Brown, a trailblazing African American cartographer known for his bird’s-eye views, in this 2017 Worlds Revealed post.
Reference librarians Julie Stoner and Amelia Raines will present an introduction to the Geography and Map collections at the Library of Congress. This orientation session, aimed at the general public, will highlight a wide range of cartographic formats and subject matter. The focus of the session will be on maps and online resources available to all patrons any time or place in the world. Topics covered will also include search tips and tricks, research and collection guides, ways to engage with the collections online, and how to prepare for a future trip to the reading room. After the presentation, staff look forward to answering additional questions from attendees.
Learn about the purpose and variety of terrestrial and celestial printed globe gores. Globe gores are strips of paper containing printed maps in the sizes and shapes needed for globe construction.
The Geography and Map Division holds a variety of printed globe gores in a variety of sizes and configurations ranging from some of the earliest examples in the 16th century to more modern examples in the 20th century. Globe gores are strips of paper containing printed maps in the sizes and shapes needed for globe construction. The maps can be either terrestrial (showing the earth) or celestial (showing the heavens) and the gores are typically football shaped. The gores can be thought of as pre-assembled building blocks for a globe of a particular size which a globe-maker can quickly utilize to construct a globe without having to spend the time constructing the maps. The printed gores would be cut out of the printed sheet(s) and pasted onto a sphere of appropriate size to construct a globe.
As far back as the third century B.C. written records about globe construction by the ancient Greeks show knowledge of a round earth. Greek grammarian and stoic philosopher Cratus of Mallus (ancient city in current day Türkiye) is known for constructing the earliest known globe of the earth around 150 B.C. The 1492 Erdapfel by 15th century German polymath Martin Behaim is the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, which was manually constructed from painted on globe gores and later inscribed with over 2,000 place names by a team of artists and scribes. Another German cartographer by the name of Martin Waldseemüller created what are thought to be the first set of printed globe gores in 1507. Coincidentally, this globe gore map along with his wall map also created in 1507 were also where the name America first appears on a map. Below is an 1879 facsimile of the Waldseemüller globe gores.
The cleric and printer Johann Schöner was another German who played an important role in the history of globe gores. He was the first to bring printed terrestrial and celestial globes together as a matched pair starting in 1515. Below is an example of celestial globe gores by Schöner from 1517.
Schöner, Johann, [Celestial globe gores], 1517, Geography and Map Division.The 16th century Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator's terrestrial and celestial globe gores created between 1541-1551 improved upon Johann Schöner's and Martin Waldseemüller woodcut engraving technique with copper engraved plates for his gores and also added equatorial coordinates and an ecliptic (path of the sun in its apparent orbit around the Earth) line that are now common features of modern terrestrial globe gores. The copper engraving technique allowed for greater detail than woodcut and the metal plates could be updated with new geographic information. A new edition of globe gores made from a woodcut would need to be entirely re-sculpted from scratch. The technical additions of features like the ecliptic line made the finished terrestrial globe more useful, especially with its celestial pair which also included this line.
Another Flemish cartographer and engraver by the name of Jodocus Hondius was a contemporary of Mercator. He purchased Mercator's Atlas map plates in 1604 and republished and sold a prolific number of updated copies.
Hondius, Jodocus, [Terrestrial globe gores], 1615, Geography and Map Division.Hondius' terrestrial 1615 globe gores shown above depict the Mercator-influenced features such as the ecliptic line and equatorial coordinates. The prime meridian on this map appears to be Ferro (Canary Islands), which was common for this time period.
My favorite globe gore maker is 17th century Venetian friar, cartographer and cosmographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli. He was famous for making at the time the largest pair of terrestrial and celestial globes in 1684 for the King of France, Louis XIV which were each 12 feet 7 inches in diameter. After spending two years in Paris building these globes, he returned to Venice and founded the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti where he decided to reproduce the globes at a reduced three-and-a-half-foot diameter scale as printed globe gores. The Geography and Map Division has a copy of the terrestrial three-and-a-half-foot globe gores (24 gores plus 2 polar calottes) cut and mounted flat daisy style in two frames with northern and southern hemisphere sections.
Photo by author. Coronelli, Vincenzo, [Three-and-a-half-foot Globe Gores, Northern Hemisphere], 1688, Geography and Map Division.Photo by author. Coronelli, Vincenzo, [Three-and-a-half-foot Globe Gores, Southern Hemisphere], 1688, Geography and Map Division.The southern hemisphere set of gores above contains a cartouche with a dedication to Cardinal César d’Estrées (who sent him to Paris to make the large globes for Louis XIV) and a self-portrait of Coronelli being unveiled by a trio of cherubs. Below is a section of a few of the northern hemisphere gores that shows North America at the time with beautifully done cartography and miniatures depicting watercraft and creatures.
Photo by author. Section from: Coronelli, Vincenzo, [Three-and-a-half-foot Globe Gores, Northern Hemisphere], 1688, Geography and Map Division.A graphic diagram called the analemma representing the position and declination (angle) of the sun in the sky seen from a fixed location on Earth at the same mean solar time throughout the year was created by Jean-Paul Grandjean de Fouchy in 1840 and subsequently started appearing on terrestrial globe gores thereafter. Below is an example of an analemma in its typical figure-8 shape on a George F. Cram globe.
Below is another example of an analemma on Rand McNally set of globe gores from 1887 in an oval shape not only showing sun declination, but the position of the zodiac for every day of the year.
Rand McNally and Company, Rand McNally & Co.’s new twelve inch terrestrial globe [gores], 1887, Geography and Map Division.Modern globe gores typically have the features accumulated through globe gore making history. As printing became more prevalent, so did the variety of arrangements of the gores on the printed page. This 1942 military globe gore example by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services below shows an arrangement pattern of interleaved gores presumably as an efficiency with the use of the paper to reduce printing costs.
United States. Office of Strategic Services, [50" military globe gores], c. 1942, Geography and Map Division.Printed globe gores provide a fascinating map format, a variety of which can be seen in the Geography and Map Division either in its original printed format on paper sheets, cut out 2D representations, or as part of finished globes. I will leave you with this facsimile 1705 example of a pair of constructed 24" terrestrial and celestial globes by George Christoph Eimmart which used globe gores.
For centuries, there have been unconventional beliefs about theshape of the Earth. This post provides a historical overview of alternative theories about the Earth's form.
The Library of Congress holds books, journal articles and other resources that explore unconventional theories about the shape of the Earth. This post focuses on maps that show the Earth in unusual forms.
Early civilizations held diverse beliefs about the shape of the Earth. Some believed that the Earth was flat or that it was floating on water. Below is a diagram of an ancient theory about the Earth's form. The diagram was derived from an article by O.C. Whitehouse, a 19th century professor and expert in ancient Hebrew literature. The Earth is represented as a disc, enclosed in a vault and surrounded by an ocean.
The Universe of the Hebrews According to Whitehouse. William Fairfield Warren. 1909. General Collections.
The concept of a spherical Earth started to gain acceptance in the third century BC. Aristotle, Parmenides, and other ancient philosophers correctly stated that the Earth is spherical in shape. The astronomer Aristarchus of Samos believed that the Earth revolved around the sun. Aristarchus measured the circumference of the Earth and Moon by observing the Earth's circular shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse. The geographer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy described the Earth as a sphere with the Sun and planets revolving around it; this concept is known as the geocentric model of the universe.
The idea of a spherical Earth continued to be recognized throughout the Middle Ages; however, there were skeptics. In the year AD 550, Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant and writer, described the world as a giant mountain, enclosed in a vault and surrounded by water. Noted geographer and historian Johann Georg Kohl traced this representation of Cosmas’s theory from a print in the French publication Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes.
The Universe after Cosmas, [A.D.] 550. J.G. Kohl. 1860. Geography and Map Division.The fact that the Earth has a spherical shape has been widely acknowledged in modern society, although the concept of a flat and stationary Earth gained acceptance among some individuals in the 19th century. This is mainly attributed to the British inventor and flat Earth advocate, Samuel Birley Rowbotham. Samuel Rowbotham believed that the Earth is shaped like a disc with the North Pole at its center. He named his theory Zetetic Astronomy. In 1865, Rowbotham wrote a book titled Zetetic Astronomy: Earth not a Globe! under the pseudonym Parallax.
Samuel Rowbotham passed away in 1884; however, the number of individuals supporting the flat Earth theory continued to grow. Featured below are two maps that were made after Rowbotham’s death.
In 1893, an American professor named Orlando Ferguson created the Map of the Square and Stationary Earth. Professor Ferguson based his beliefs on a biblical passage which describes four angels standing at the corners of the Earth.
Map of the Square and Stationary Earth : Four Hundred Passages in the Bible that Condemn the Globe Theory, or the Flying Earth, and None Sustain It...Orlando Ferguson. 1893. Geography and Map Division.
Detailed below is an illustration from the map. Two men are desperately clinging to a spherical Earth as it travels 65,000 miles per hour around the Sun.
Detail from Map of the Square and Stationary Earth…
Next is a map created in 1920 by another American professor, John G. Abizaid. Professor Abizaid believed that the Earth is flat and stationary with the Sun, Moon, and stars in constant motion. Abizaid shared his theories in his book The Enlightenment of the World.
New Correct Map of the Flat Surface, Stationary Earth. John George Abizaid. 1920. Geography and Map Division.
The number of flat Earth advocates increased during the 20th century. In 1956, Samuel Shenton, a conspiracy theorist and lecturer, founded the International Flat Earth Research Society. As of today, flat Earth research organizations remain active.
I have included some background information regarding unconventional beliefs about the Earth’s shape; discover more through the sources listed below.
Further Reading:
The Flat Earth and Its Advocates, a Library of Congress research guide prepared by Sean Bryant, Science Reference Specialist, Science, Technology and Business Division. This guide is adapted from a 1998 reference list created by Ruth Freitag titled “The Flat Earth and its Advocates: A List of References.” The guide provides links to books and journal articles on the pseudoscientific theory that the earth is a flat disc.
