Vienna, Austria
Until the 19th century, globes often came as a pair—a world globe and
a matching celestial globe. One can’t help but observe the admirable
craft and beauty that was once devoted to these small representations of
our world. To visit the Globe Museum is to step back into a time when
all things, including scientific instruments, were made with care and
artistry. There is no better way to explore the ways in which man’s
understanding of the earth and the heavens has changed over hundreds of
years of exploration and study.
The world’s only public museum dedicated solely to globes contains an
astonishing collection. (The Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England,
also has an extensive globe collection.) There are folding fabric globes
(which were inflated with a bellows), giant man-sized globes, and tiny
plum-sized globes, each exquisitely made with dark wood, fine lines, and
rich colors.
Some of the most interesting items in the museum are the brass
tellurions. A tellurion is a mechanical demonstration of the earth's
movement about its axes, consisting of a long arm at the end of which is
a small rotating globe with a moon spinning around it. At the other end
of the arm is a charmingly simple sun: a candle and a brass reflecting
disc. With a turn of the crank, the system comes alive. As the earth and
moon spin, the tellurion shows seasons, eclipses, tides, precessions of
the equinox, and other astronomical phenomena.
