1787 Samuel Dunn Large Antique Double Hemisphere World Map w/ Scientific anno.

Cartographer :Samuel Dunn

  • Title : A General Map of the World, or Terraqueous Globe with all the New Discoveries and Marginal Delineations, Containing the Most Interesting Particulars in the Solar, Starry and Mundane System...1787
  • Date : 1787 
  • Condition: (A) Very Good Condition
  • Ref:  80778
  • Size: 49 1/2in x 41in (1.25m x 1.020mm)

Description:
This monumental very large original copper-plate engraved antique double hemisphere world map, with scientific annotations, by Thomas Dunn, with cartographic material based on information by J. B. B. D Anville, was engraved by Thomas Kitchin in 1787 - dated - and published by Robert Sayer as plate nos. 1-2 in the 1790 edition of General Atlas.

Samuel Dunns General Map of the World, or Terraqueous Globe, is a general world map with all the new discoveries and marginal delineations, containing interesting information relating to the solar, starry and mundane systems, star charts, a map of the Moon, the Solar System, and numerous other features. Dunns large map has an insurmountable amount of general & scientific detail.
This map is one of the most popular and recognizable large maps of the world from the period, having been the map of choice for a number of atlases published by Jefferys, Sayer and Bennett & Laurie and Whittle over a 30 year period. The map was revised several times..

General Definitions:
Paper thickness and quality: - Heavy and stable
Paper color : - off white
Age of map color: - Original & later
Colors used: - Blue, pink, red, green, yellow
General color appearance: - Authentic
Paper size: - 49 1/2in x 41in (1.25m x 1.020mm)
Plate size: - 49 1/2in x 41in (1.25m x 1.020mm)
Margins: - Min 1/2in (12mm)

Imperfections:
Margins: - Top margin cropped close to plate-mark
Plate area: - Bottom left Analemma globe restored and backed
Verso: - Some folds strengthened with archival tape

Background: 
The double hemisphere globes are surrounded on all sides by detailed scientific calculations and descriptions as well as Northern and Southern Hemisphere star charts, a map of the Moon, a latitude and longitude analemma chart, a map of the Solar System, a mercator projection of the world, an analemma projection, a seasonal chart, a universal scale chart, and numerous smaller diagrams depicting planets and mathematical systems. All text is in English. The survey of this map starts in North America, much of which was, even in 1794, largely unknown.
North America, this map follows shortly after the explorations of captain James Cook in the Arctic and Pacific Northwest, so the general outline of the continent is close to complete. However, when this map was made, few inland expeditions had extended westward in America, beyond the Mississippi. This map notes two separate speculative courses for the apocryphal river of the west, a northern route extending from lake Winnipeg and a southern route passing south of Winnipeg through Pike\'s lake. The River of the West was hopeful dream of French and English explorers who were searching for a water passage through North America to the Pacific. In concept, should such a route be found, it would have become an important trade artery allowing the British and French, whose colonies dominated the eastern parts of North America, to compete with the Spanish for control of the lucrative Asia-Pacific trade. These earlier speculative cartographers didn\'t realize that the bulk of the Rocky Mountains stood between them and their plans. The kingdom of Quivira, which is one of the lands associated with Spanish legends of the Seven Cities of Gold is located slightly south of the western rivers. In this area we can also find Drake\'s Harbor or Port de la Bodega and Albion. Drake\'s Harbor is where Sir Francis Drake supposedly landed during his circumnavigation of the globe in 1580. Drake wintered in this harbor and used the abundant resources of the region to repair his ships. He also claimed the lands for England dubbing them New Albion. Although the true location of Drake\'s port is unknown, most place it much further to the north. By situating it and consequently New Albion further to the south, Dunn is advocating a British rather than Spanish claim to this region. On the Eastern coast of North America we find a fledgling United States extending from Georgia to Maine. Dunn names Boston, New York, Charleston, Long Island, and Philadelphia, as well as the important smaller towns of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Edonton.

South America, exhibits a typically accurate coastline and limited knowledge of the interior beyond Peru and the populated coastlands. A few islands are noted off the coast, including the Galapagos, which are referred to as the Inchanted Islands. The Amazon is vague with many of its tributaries drawn in speculatively. Dunn and d\'Anville have done away with the popular representation of Manoa or El Dorado in Guyana, but a vestigial Lake Parima is evident. Further south, the Laguna de los Xarayes, another apocryphal destination, is drawn at the northernmost terminus of the Paraguay River. The Xaraiés, meaning Masters of the River were an indigenous people occupying what are today parts of Brazil\'s Matte Grosso and the Pantanal. When Spanish and Portuguese explorers first navigated up the Paraguay River, as always in search of El Dorado, they encountered the vast Pantanal flood plain at the height of its annual inundation. Understandably misinterpreting the flood plain as a gigantic inland sea, they named it after the local inhabitants, the Xaraies. The Laguna de los Xarayes almost immediately began to appear on early maps of the region and, at the same time, almost immediately took on a legendary aspect as the gateway to El Dorado.
Across the Atlantic in Africa we find the situation in South America mirrored - that is, the coasts are well defined by the interior is vague. The Nile River follows the Ptolemaic course with a presumed source in two lakes at the base of the \'Mountains of the Moon.\' Further east, the Niger River is well mapped but gets lost as it flows inland. There is no suggestion of its outlet into the Gulf of Guinea, which at the time had not been considered. In the southern part of Africa we fine an elongated lake without a northern border labeled Massi. This is probably an embryonic form of Lake Malawi. Also in this area, we encounter the Kingdom of Monomatapa and the mountain range called the \'Backbone of the World.\' This region of Africa held a particular fascination for Europeans since the Portuguese first encountered it in the 16th century. At the time, this area was a vast empire called Mutapa or Monomotapa that maintained an active trading network with faraway partners in India and Asia. As the Portuguese presence in the area increased in the 17th century, the Europeans began to note that Monomatapa was particularly rich in gold. They were also impressed with the numerous well crafted stone structures, including the mysterious nearby ruins of Great Zimbabwe. This combination led many Europeans to believe that King Solomon\'s Mines, a sort of African El Dorado, must be hidden in this region. Monomotapa did in fact have rich gold mines in the 16th and 17th centuries, but most of these had been exhausted by the 1700s.
Asia is exceptionally well mapped reflecting the most recent information available in Europe - especially regarding the explorations of Vitus Bering and Tschirikow in the Siberian Arctic. Notes Macau, Formosa (Tay-oan), numerous silk route cities, the straits of Sin Capura (Singapore), Beijing (Peking), Edo (Tokyo) and Bombay.
Australia appears in full as New Holland or Terra Australis. Names numerous points along the coast with associated notes regarding the activities of various explorers. Van Diemen\'s Land or Tasmania is curiously attached to the mainland - an error that many earlier maps had long ago corrected. Further east New Zealand is exceptionally well formed. Most of the region has been thoroughly mapped by Cook, though several of the cartographic errors perpetuated by Quiros are present. There is little trace of either Antarctica or the Great Southern continent, though Bouvet\'s Island does appear as \'Sandwich Land.\'
Throughout the map we can also find the routes of numerous important explorers including Middleton, Anson, Bougainville, Cook, the Resolution, the Spanish Galleon Carlos, Bouvet, and others. Often their landings and important discoveries are also noted.

Dunn, Samuel d. 1794
Samuel Dunn was a British mathematician and amateur astronomer.
He was a native of Crediton, Devonshire. His father died at Crediton in 1744. He wrote in his will:.....
In 1743, when the first great fire broke out and destroyed the west town, I had been some time keeping a school and teaching writing, accounts, navigation, and other mathematical science, although not above twenty years of age; then I moved to the schoolhouse at the foot of Bowdown [now Bowden] Hill, and taught there till Christmas 1751, when I came to London.....
The schoolhouse was the place where the English schoo\\\" was kept previously to its union with the blue school in 1821. In London, Dunn taught in different schools, and gave private lessons.
In 1757, he came before the public as the inventor of the universal planispheres, or terrestrial and celestial globes in plano, four large stereographical maps, with a transparent index placed over each map.....
whereby the circles of the sphere are instantaneously projected on the plane of the meridian for any latitude, and the problems of geography, astronomy, and navigation wrought with the same certainty and ease as by the globes themselves, without the help of scale and compasses, pen and ink.....
He published an account of their Description and Use, 2nd edition, octavo, London, 1759. From the preface, it appears that in 1758 Dunn had become master of an academy for boarding and qualifying young gentlemen in arts, sciences, and languages, and for business, at Chelsea. It was at Ormond House, where there was a good observatory.
On 1 January 1760, he made the observation of a remarkable comet; other discoveries he communicated to the Royal Society. Towards the close of 1763, he gave up the school at Chelsea, and fixing himself at Brompton Park, near Kensington, resumed once more his private teaching. In 1764 he made a short tour through France. In 1774, when residing at 6 Clements Inn, near Temple Bar, he published his excellent New Atlas of the Mundane System, or of Geography and Cosmography, describing the Heavens and the Earth. … The whole elegantly engraved on sixty-two copper plates. With a general introduction, folio, London. About this time his reputation led to his being appointed mathematical examiner of the candidates for the East India Company\\\'s service.
Under the companys auspices he was enabled to publish in a handsome form several of his more important works. Such were:
1. A New and General Introduction to Practical Astronomy, with its application to Geography … Topography, octavo, London, 1774.
2. The Navigators Guide to the Oriental or Indian Seas, or the Description and Use of a Variation Chart of the Magnetic Needle, designed for shewing the Longitude throughout the principal parts of the Atlantic, Ethiopic, and Southern Oceans, octavo, London (1775).
3. A New Epitome of Practical Navigation, or Guide to the Indian Seas, containing the Elements of Mathematical Learning, used … in the Theory and Practice of Nautical affairs; the Theory of Navigation. ..; the Method of Correcting and Determining the Longitude at Sea …; the Practice of Navigation in all kinds of Sailing (with copper plates), octavo, London, 1777, and
4. The Theory and Practice of the Longitude at Sea … with copper plates, octavo, London, 1778; second edition, enlarged, quarto, London, 1786.
He also methodised, corrected, and further enlarged a goodly quarto, entitled A New Directory for the East Indies … being a work originally begun upon the plan of the Oriental Neptune, augmented and improved by Mr. Willm. Herbert, Mr. Willm. Nichelson, and others, London, 1780, which reached a fifth edition the same year. Dunn was living at 8 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in July 1777, but by September 1780 had taken up his abode at 1 Boar\\\'s Head Court, Fleet Street, where he continued for the remainder of his life.
He died in January 1794. His will, dated 5 January 1794, was proved at London, on the 20 January by his kinsman, William Dunn, officer of excise of London (registered in P.C.C., 16, Holman). Therein he describes himself as teacher of the mathematics and master for the longitude at sea, and desires to be buried in the parish church belonging to the place where I shall happen to inhabit a little time before my decease. He names seven relations to whom he left £20 each; but to his wife, Elizabeth Dunn, who hath withdrawn herself from me near thirty years, the sum only of ten pounds. No children are mentioned.
He also requested the corporation of Crediton to provide always and have a master of the school at the foot of Bowden Hill residing therein, of the church of England, but not in holy orders, an able teacher of writing, navigation, the lunar method of taking the longitude at sea, planning, drawing, and surveying, with all mathematical science. For this purpose he left £30 a year. Six boys were to be taught, with a preference to his own descendants. The stock thus bequeathed produced in 1823 dividends amounting to £25 4/- per annum, the school being known by the name of Dunn\\\'s School.
Dunn contributed nine papers to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, of which body, however, he was not a fellow. On the title-page of his Atlas he appears as a member of the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, America. A few of his letters to Thomas Birch are preserved, and one to Emanuel Mendes da Costa

$5,250.00