This is a map.
Of course, it’s not just any map. It’s the Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioru[m]que Lustrationes from 1507, otherwise known as the Waldseemüller map after its creator, Martin Waldseemüller. It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean, and also the first map to use the name “America.” When it comes to maps, this map is about as “map-y” as you can get.
Maps and atlases were among the first items acquired when the Library of Congress was established in 1800, and the Library’s holdings represent the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world, numbering over 5.2 million maps, including 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, numerous globes and three-dimensional plastic relief models (like the large one on the right), and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including electronic.
So we all know what a map looks like, right?
So is this a map?
Or this? (Click on the “start” icon in the top left corner to see it in action.)
Or this?
Each of these “maps” share elements with the Waldseemüller, yet they’re all different in significant ways. They pack an increased amount of location information within a roughly similar size and shape, but the challenges of preserving them and keeping them understandable over time has increased considerably. These maps (or at least ones like them), in all their beauty and complexity, will one day be revered for what they tell us about our culture in the early decades of the 21st