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John Mitchell, Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, (1755). Call No. Vault Ayer 133 M66 1775.
Cover, Carl J. Hals and A. Rydstrom, Map of Yellowstone National Park (1885). Call No. Map 4F G4262.Y4 1885 H3.
Anon. A Plan of Carver's Grant from the Nawdowissie Indians (ca. 1825). Call No. Vault Ayer MS map 257.
William Clark, "A Map of Part of the Continent of North America," c 1810. Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Claudius Ptolemy. [World map on the Second Projection] in Geographia. Edited by Nicolaus Germanus. Ulm: Lienhart Holle, 1482. Call No. Ayer *6 P9 1482a.
A Benedictine monk named Donnus Nicolaus Germanus drew the manuscript maps that were used to make the beautifully colored woodcuts in the 1482 edition of the Geographia. Although this map is referred to as a world map, it really depicts only about one quarter of the surface of the Earth, the habitable world as known to Ptolemy and his ancient Greek contemporaries. Surrounding the map are personifications of winds with mythological names. It was a common medieval and early modern practice to equate compass directions with the winds that blew from them. We might see them as decorative curiosities, but to the maritime world of the Renaissance Europe, these were important geographical features.
Claudius Ptolemy. [Construction of Ptolemy's Second Projection] in Geographia. Strasbourg: I. Grieninger, 1525. Call No. Ayer *6 P9 1525
Ptolemy's Geographia influenced the reform of the science of geography during the Renaissance by impressing upon Europeans the desirability and practicability of compiling maps by means of mathematics. Ptolemy's "Second Projection," shown here, attempts to depict the relative sizes of different parts of the world in true proportion to each other. Although Ptolemy's projections enabled cartographers to represent the shape of the earth, he underestimated its true size. As a result, when Europeans such as Christopher Columbus consulted early Renaissance editions of the Geographia they saw maps that placed Japan and East Asia nearly three times closer to the coast of Spain than their actual locations.