Now there's something incredible I think about how when we look at a map we can
transport ourselves in our imaginations to the places they show, whether it be a
place we visited from our memory or a paradise island we would dearly love to
travel to. Maps as armchair travel or virtual tourism has actually been a
thing for many many centuries and maps can offer some much-needed escapism.
That's never been truer than the present. I'm particularly enthralled by how older
maps, when we look at them, can transport us back in time and of course when we
consider maps such as star charts or celestial charts we see the idea and the
possibility of traveling beyond our world all together. I'd like to introduce
you to one of my favorite items. It's a celestial globe or a star globe. The
globe was produced in 1700 in London by a man, a map maker, an instrument maker
called Thomas Tuttel and it's one of a number of globes from the British
Library's collection which we've had digitised and turned into interactive
3D models and put on our website bl.uk/maps for you to study and enjoy
for free. We're very grateful to the British Library's digitisation service
and Cyreal for helping make this possible. The globe is a papier-mache sphere about
36 centimeters in diameter but set in a mahogany stand and when we look at the
surface we can see all sorts of things. We can see all of the known stars; we can
see the stars grouped into constellations. Now everyone's familiar
with the idea of the terrestrial globe, the globe of the earth, but although
celestial globes are rather more niche, we actually think that they predate
terrestrial globes by quite a long way. The earliest surviving globe is actually
a star globe and actually when you think about it, the sky would have had far
greater presence upon people's lives in earlier eras both practically and
psychologically. I'm fascinated by this globe and just how vivid and dynamic the
constellations are. Now this way of showing the constellations really
derives from Dutch globes produced the previous century but they're full of
expression and they all flow into each other in this really compelling and
entertaining way. For example if you look at the area of Centaurus, the Centaur is
actually running through with the lance his neighbour constellation Lupus the
wolf. This is absolutely top-drawer entertainment for those
looking at it. I really like this globe because it shows us just how successive
societies placed what they valued most in the constellations.
For example ancient civilisations placed their myths and legends there. We've still
got them there today. Europeans from the sixteenth century created constellations
from the wondrous things they'd seen on their travels such as the constellation
of the chameleon and the flying fish and the tucan. Tuttel's globe contains the
constellation called Cor Caroli which is Latin for 'Heart of
Charles' and this was placed as a constellation in honour of King Charles
II of England who came to the throne in 1660 following the Restoration. I
look at these constellations and sometimes wonder what our society might place as a
constellation as well, had we not become more preoccupied by the Moon and Mars.
Now a celestial globe doesn't just show the stars; it's actually nothing less
than a conceptual model for the entire universe. The idea of it is that the
celestial sphere was imagined to be this colossal globe that actually encased our
own world with the Earth right in the centre and onto the inside of this vast
globe was studded all of the stars and celestial objects you can imagine. That's
basically the idea behind it and we the viewer, looking at the globes, are placed
outside the globe looking in. Which is why when you look at celestial globes,
actually all of the constellations and the stars are the wrong way around- they're
back to front. And that's why we're pretty sure that one of the main uses
of the celestial globes was not stargazing. We think they're very
probably used for teaching or education, theorising about the world, the
nature and form of the universe. And also that often forgotten aspect of maps that's
incredibly important- cultural enrichment and enjoyment.