The President’s Globe [pictures]

One of the things I got wrong in my 2010 book Mapping was the claim that the University of Georgia has a President’s globe in the Geography Department.

I said this because A) Arthur Robinson, who made the globes, said he thought there was one at UGA, and B) there is actually is a humungous globe in the UGA lobby.

However, it’s not a “President’s Globe” which was a 50″ globe made by the OSS during WWII that was given to President Roosevelt, after someone had seen a large globe owned by Stalin and thought that the US ought to have a big globe too.

Several globes were made in the end and reputedly given to Churchill, some reputedly ended up in a Wisconsin high school and so on. (Until I have eye-witness reports of these I’m pulling a “Glomar response” and will neither confirm nor deny them.)

Anyway, a restored President’s Globe is at the AGSL and when I was there I took a few pictures so you can see for yourself.

After the globe was restored in the mid-1990s, Robinson gave a talk at the AGSL about the history of the globe, which is available on VHS at the library (however, AGSL said they’d copy it to DVD and perhaps even store it digitally). It’s well worth watching.

(Thanks to Ian Muehlenhaus for the loan of a camera to take these pictures).