The globe is gone. The enormous model of Earth that for over 60 years has greeted all visitors to Guyot Hall, was disassembled on February 10 and sent to a new home in Wall, New Jersey.

The globe – formally known as the “Geophysical Globe,” was built in 1957 and presented to the Department by Princeton alumni Carl M. Loeb, Jr. ’26 and Henry A. Loeb ’29.  It cost $10,600, or about $120,000 in today’s dollars.

The globe is special, one of only a few built. Versions were exhibited at the National Academy of Science in Washington and in the United States Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. To our knowledge, only one other remains on public display.

One of the special things about the globe is its size — six feet nine inches in diameter. More importantly, it is an accurate reproduction of Earth's features above sea level. The horizontal scale is 1:1,6,720,000 or one inch equaling 106 miles (1 cm to 167 km), with the vertical exaggeration at sea level of about 80:1 and for higher mountains about 10:1. The colors represent the maximum summer vegetation around the world and includes newly surveyed landforms for Antarctica as revised by cartographers during the International Geophysical Year (1957-58).
 

At the time it was built, the globe had the highest degree of contoured accuracy for a relief globe.

Although once a state-of-the-art teaching tool, the globe lacked details we now know are important. For example, when it was built plate tectonic theory was still in its infancy. And while the globe does have subtle shading of the ocean floor, hinting at the ocean ridges, trenches and other bathymetric features so critical to the development of the theory, those features are not shown in relief. To ensure the scientific relevancy of the globe, under Professor Lincoln Hollister’s supervision, Sarah Bertuccci ’98 developed explanatory panels accompanied by photos of relevant areas, that related both continental and oceanic features to plate tectonics.

The Department has donated the globe to the InfoAge Science and History Museums and Learning Center. Harry Gordon, Autin Wright and their team from HHG Studios, LLC in Lambertville, NJ took the globe apart, transported it, and reassembled it at the museum site in Wall. This was no small feat, as the globe did not come with instructions!

InfoAge is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of the communications and scientific legacy of the Camp Evans Historic District, with a mission to preserve and honor scientific innovation and to inspire new generations of scientists. Other exhibits feature space exploration, military communications, computer evolution, radio technology, shipwrecks, model trains, electronic warfare, and a fire station museum. Our globe will be a natural fit for this National Historic Landmark.

When the Department moves to its new building this spring, in place of the old globe a spherical projection system will be installed, capable of displaying high-resolution data sets and dynamically illustrating a wide variety of global phenomena.