Treasured 16th-Century 'Lenox Globe' Gets a Digital Makeover
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, New York, January 14, 2015 Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer
In a dark room at the New York Public Library, a cartographer, a curator of rare books and a handful of scientists crowded around a camera ringed by colored lights. All eyes were trained on a small, copper sphere about the size of a grapefruit: the Lenox Globe, the oldest surviving globe to depict the New World.By imaging the globe from top to bottom and conducting a 3D scan of it, the researchers plan to provide a precise digital record of the object that will last for generations, giving scholars and members of the public a glimpse at what people knew about world geography in the early 1500s. Chet Van Duzer, a cartographer currently based at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., is leading the effort to image the ancient orb.
To read more from the LiveScience article, click here or on the image below.
Credit: Jonathan Blanc/The New York Public Library
Click on arrow below to see a slideshow of the photo shoot at the New York Public Library
