Universalis Cosmographies, world map first to show America
The naming of America
Martin Waldseemuller the person to use the world America for the first time on this day in 1507. Waldseemuller was a Garman cartographer. He is credited with the first recorded usage of the word America.
On April 25 in 1507, as a member of Gymnasium Vosagense at Saint Diey (German: Sankt Diedolt) in the duchy of Lorraine (today Saint-Die-des-Vosges, France), he produced a globular world map and large 12-panel world wall map called Universalis Cosmographia, both beading the first use of the name ‘America’. The globular and wall maps were accompanied by a book Cosmographies introductio, an introduction to Latin of the Quattuor Americi Cespuccij navigationes (Four Voyages of Americo Vespucci), which is apparently a letter written by Amerigo Vespucci, although some historians consider it have been a forgery written by its supposed recipient in Italy.
In 1513 Waldseemuller appears to have had the second thought about the name, probably due to contemporary protests about Vespucci’s role in the discovery and naming of America, separated from East Asia. In his reworking of the Ptolemy atlas, the continent is labeled simply Terra incognita (unknown land). Despite the revision, 1,000 copies of the world maps had sice been distributed, and the original suggestion took hold. While North America was still called ladies in documents for some time, it was eventually called America as wall.
The wall map was lost for a long time, but a copy was found in a castle at wolfegg in southern Germany by Joseph Fischer in 1901. It is still the only copy known to survive, and it was purchased by the Library of congress in May 2003.
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