Wilson, James

Wilson's Thirteen-Inch Terrestrial Globe ... Exhibiting ... the Positions of the Principal Known Places of the Earth; with the Tracks of Various Circumnavigators, together with New Discoveries and Political Alterations to the Present Period — Wilson's New Thirteen-Inch Celestial Globe Containing the Positions of Nearly 7000 Stars, Clusters, Nebulae & Carefully Compil'd and Laid Down from the Latest Astronomical Tables ... Albany: Cyrus Lancaster, 1835



Terrestrial Globe: (diameter 13 in.; 330 mm; height ca. 31 in.; 787 mm). Twelve handcolored engraved gores, polar calottes, laid down on a sphere, metal pinions at the poles, turning within a brass meridian-ring with incised graduations and brass hour-pointers, let into notches in the horizon ring supported by four wooden arms, on a mahogany stand with three cabriole legs, brass paw feet and castors, the center compass joined and supported by stretchers; moderately varnished, expert repairs to several tears on globe, crack in one supporting arm neatly repaired. Celestial Globe: Twelve handcolored engraved gores, polar calottes, laid down on a sphere, metal pinions at the poles, turning within a brass meridian ring with incised graduations, let into notches in the horizon ring supported by four wooden arms, on a stand identical to that of the Terrestrial Globe; several tears to engraved gores repaired, two cracks on supporting arms repaired.

Bedini 380–382

Celestial and terrestrial globes by America's first globemaker.

Wilson apparently visited Dartmouth College in 1796 and saw a pair of European globes there. It is said he became so fascinated by them he determined to make globes himself. He studied geography, taught himself engraving, learned to make his own tools, lathes, ink, presses, glues, and varnishes, and to case his own meridian-rings. By 1809 or 1810 he was producing globes commercially, and selling them for fifty dollars a pair.

By 1818 Wilson had moved from Vermont to Albany, New York, establishing there his "artificial globe manufactory," and taking his sons into the business. Wilson retired from active management of the firm in 1826, and one of Wilson's employees, Cyrus Lancaster, took over the business when Wilson's two sons died in 1833.

"Wilson's globes were sold at prices substantially below those of globes imported from England and had other advantages as well. On the Wilson terrestrial globes the several states and territories of the United States were more accurately delineated than they were on the products of the most popular English makers, and the Wilson celestial globes utilized the latest astronomical tables and were reduced in accordance with the precession of the equinoxes of that time" (Bedini).