Another cartographic publishing firm was established at Amsterdam
in 1612 by Willem Janszon Blaeu (1571–1638), a friend of
Tycho Brahe, from 1633 “mapmaker” of the states-general,
and a man of scientific culture. He was succeeded by his son
Jan (d. 1673) and grandson Cornelius, and before the end of
the century turned out a Zee-Spiegel of 108 charts (1623), an
Atlas novus (Nieuwe Atlas), 1642, enlarged in the course of time
until it consisted of 12 folio volumes containing hundreds of
maps. J. A. Colom in 1633 published a collection of maps under
the quaint title of Vurig Colom der Zeevaert (Fiery Column of
Navigation). Among more recent Dutch map publishers are
Nicolaus Vischer (Piscator), R. Goos, H. Doncker, F. de Wit, and
J. and G. van Keulen, whose atlases were published between
1681 and 1722. These Dutch maps and charts are generally
accompanied by descriptive notes or sailing directions printed
on the back of them. A similar work is the Arcano del mare of
Sir Robert Dudley, duke of Northumberland, the numerous
sheets of which are on Mercator’s projection (1631).
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| Fig. 31.—Mercator’s Chart of the World (1569). |
In France, in the meantime, an arc of the meridian had been measured (1669–1670) by Jean Picard, numerous longitudes had been observed between 1672 and 1680 by the same, and by Phil. de Lahire (d. 1719), and these were utilized in a Carte de France “as corrected from the observations of the members of the Academy of Sciences” (1666–1699), in a map of the world (1694) by D. Cassini, as also in Le Neptune François (1693) with contributions by Pene, D. Cassini and others. These corrected longitudes were not yet available for the maps produced by Nicolas Sanson of Abbeville, since 1627. The cartographical establishment founded by him in that year was carried on after his death in 1667 by his sons, his son-in-law, P. Duval (d. 1683) and his grandson Robert du Vaugondy (d. 1766). Among the cartographers whom he employed were M. Tavernier and Mariette, and in many instances he mentioned the authors whose maps he copied. By 1710 the maps published by the firm numbered 466. Nicolas de Fer, the great rival of Sanson, and his heirs, are stated to have published as many as 600 maps after 1700.
In no other country of Europe was there at the close of the 16th century a geographical establishment capable of competing with the Dutch towns or with Sanson, but the number of those who produced maps, in many instances based upon original surveys, was large. Germany is thus represented, among others, by C. Henneberger (map of Prussia, 1576), by M. Oeder, (survey of Saxony, 1586–1607), A. Rauh (fine hill features on a map of the environs of Wangen and Lindau, 1617), W. Schickhardt (survey of Württemberg, 1624–1635), and G. M. Vischer (map of Austria and Styrai, 1669–1786); Switzerland by H. C. Gyger (Canton of Zürich, a masterpiece, 1667); Italy by G. A. Magini (1558–1610), and V. Coronelli, appointed cosmographer of the Venetian Republic, 1685, and founder of the Ac. Cosmogr. dei Argonauti, the earliest geographical society, and Diogo Homem, a Portuguese settled at Venice (1558–1574); Denmark by J. Mejer of Husum (1650); Sweden by A. Buraeus, the “father of Swedish cartographers” (1650–1660); the British Islands by Ch. Saxton (County Atlas of England and Wales 1575), J. Speed (Theatrum of Great Britain, 1610), Timothy Pont and Robert Gordon of Strathloch (map of Scotland, 1608), and A. Moll. A Novus atlas sinensis, based upon Chinese surveys, was published in 1655 by Martin Martini, S.J., a missionary recently returned from China. Isaac Voss, in his work De Nili (1659), published a map of central Africa, in which he anticipated D’Anville by rejecting all the fanciful details which found a place upon Filippo Pigafetta’s map of that continent.
The first maps illustrating the variation of the compass were published by Chris. Burrus (d. 1632) and Athanasius Kircher (Magnes, Rome, 1643), and maps of the ocean and tidal currents by the latter in his Mundus subterraneus (1665). Edmund Halley, the astronomer, compiled the first variation chart of scientific value (1683), as also a chart of the winds (1686).
