1507 Waldseemueller map naming 'America' comes to U.S.
Library of Congress historians say the world map, completed by German-born cleric and cartographer Martin Waldseemueller in 1507, is the first known document to use the name America, the first to depict the Western Hemisphere and the first to show separate Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The New World territories were named for Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
Merkel...recalled that the map is sometimes referred to as "America's birth certificate," and Waldseemueller and Vespucci can justifiably be called the "godfathers" of America.
Waldseemueller's work recognizes the voyages of Christopher Columbus but chooses to honor Vespucci, who made several voyages along the South American coast shortly after Columbus and concluded that he had found a New World unknown to Europe...
Waldseemueller, who worked out of a school in St. Die in northeastern France, did not use the name "America" in several subsequent maps, but by 1520 several other cartographers had adopted the appellation and it came into common usage.
The German prince who owned the map, the only known surviving copy of the original print of 1,000, agreed in 2001 to sell it to the Library of Congress for $10 million (now worth euro7.4 million). Congress provided half the money, with the rest coming from private contributors.
The deal was completed in 2003 and the map has been at the Library of Congress since then, but the two sides had been unable to arrange an official transfer, required because the map was on Germany's national culture list until now.
Related Links
The map that named America (LOC paper)