Antique terrestrial globe edited by E. Schotte Berlin, second half of XIX century.

Antique terrestrial globe edited by E. Schotte Berlin, second half of XIX century.

Germany 1870s

Size: 26 cm H x 13 cm diameter

Ernst Schotte & co. was an important globes and planetaria maker firm, established in Berlin in 1855. By the 1870s the E. Schotte & co. produced many globes in over 25 languages; they also produced many celestial globes, lunaria and planetaria, exported all over Europe, with a particular and decorative design. The firm continued production until early XX century.

Men have always wanted to understand the world where they live, and they used all possible instruments to measure the space around and to increase their knowledge. Men had the possibilities to create some models of universe just when they had understood that it was possible to represent all natural processes by models. In old Greece, Naturalists understood sphericity of the Earth and its suspended position in space. The oldest globe is attributed by Strabo, historian and geographer, to Cratete from Mallo (about 150 B.C.). The first globes, in early XVI century, were made following up big geographical explorations and they were used for didactic uses in courts, monasteries and colleges; then globes were used also in universities and schools.