Martin Waldseemüller
Back to people overviewA very influential German cartographer and scholar whose works include the first to map to South America as a continent separate from Asia. Waldseemüller's ‘Cosmographia’ (1507) contains the first printed instance of the name “America. The book was accompanied by a set of small woodcut map gores, the first known printed gores for a terrestrial globe ever made. These were a companion to the ‘Universalis cosmographia...’, a great woodcut world map produced by Waldseemüller in 12 sheets, and the first printed wall map of Europe. Waldseemüller published a revolutionary edition of Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’ in 1513. In addition to 27 maps of the “old” world, it included a supplement of 20 new maps, including of the “new” world. A second edition of Waldseemüller's atlas was printed In 1520, featuring his famous "Admiral's Map".
