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Historic globes are fragile objects. Few survive without some evidence of change to the varied materials used in their fabrication, including damage to the globe shell, loss of the paper or design media, staining, entrenched grime, discolouration or loss of the protective varnish, or poor quality repairs. While an improvement in condition is the primary focus of treatment and the foundation of an improvement in appearance, attention directed specifically at the legibility of a globe is equally legitimate. When designing a conservation treatment, it is critical to compare how a particular globe could appear relative to its individual condition, and how that globe should appear relative to other examples of the same edition. A development of particular interest is the option of filling losses via digital photography, image manipulation, and archival printing which can have a major effect on its integrity as a work of cartography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1678 a committee of Fellows of the Royal Society was appointed to oversee the production of an ‘English Atlas’ in co-operation with the printer Moses Pitt. The new atlas was to be large and grand, published in eleven volumes with hundreds of maps. It was, as the official proposal put it, no less than ‘a new and Accurat description of the World’. However, it was never brought to completion. This article examines unpublished mathematical papers which document John Pell’s attempts to devise a projectional model in accordance with the published proposals for the atlas. Proposals and advertisements for potential collaborators, composed and circulated by the committee, put forward a representation of idealised cartographic practice. However, when it came to calculating the projection, Pell struggled to accommodate these idealised practices. Pell’s mathematical papers, previously unexamined, afford an unusual perspective on the Royal Society’s methods, and suggest that failures, as well as successes, influenced the developing identity of the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The focus in this article is on school atlases produced in Britain in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and on what is revealed, both in their pages and in the processes behind their compilation, about the people who were producing and using such map books. The Bartholomew Archive, in Edinburgh, has proved to be an exceptionally rich source of hitherto unexamined data on the business and personal activities of one of the leading producers of school atlases, the local firm of John Bartholomew and Son, which was active in map making and publishing between 1880 and 1987. The sociology and pattern of communication of publishing, explored by book historians and historians of science, geography and cartography in other contexts, are here considered in relation to the atlases that were produced in Britain for schools in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the Empire in the period 1880–1930. Particular attention is paid to the efforts of mapmakers, publishers, geographers and other professionals to ensure the relevance of the maps selected in school atlases for specific audiences, to guarantee the credibility of the information communicated through these atlases, and to negotiate questions of authorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares several atlases of premodern towns in Europe. Includes `Irish Historic Towns Atlas,' 1-6,' edited by J.H. Andrews, H.B. Clarke and A. Simms; `Altante Storico delle Citta Italiane,' 1-9, edited by F. Bocchi and E. Guidoni; `Atlas Historique des Villes de France,' 1-9, by C.H. Higounet, J.B. Marquette and PH. Wolff.

The article reports on the proposed National Atlas of Britain on the British Isles. It is said that a committee was appointed under the Chairmanship of Prof. Eva G. R. Taylor to consider the possibility and desirability of producing a National Atlas of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is also said that the scheme has overwhelming scientific advantages but presents certain technical difficulties as well. The aim of the proposed atlas is said to be an objective and scientific presentation of the natural conditions, natural resources, and economic utilization of the land, of the history and prehistory of the country, and of the distribution, occupations, movement and social conditions of the population.

The article reports that Trinity College and Yale University in Great Britain wants to obtain the rare and ancient atlas of the heavens compiled by Reverend John Flamsteed. Flamsteed, was known as the first astronomer royal in Great Britain. The volume printed in 1753 was found hidden under the eaves of an old house in Hebron, Connecticut.