Globes. A globe is a round or spherical body (see SPHERE), and in the singular number the word is often used to signify the earth, as in the phrase, 'the terraqueous globe;' but by 'globes,' or 'the globes,' we usually mean a pair of artificial globes used as a part of school-room apparatus. These globes are usually hollow spheres of card-board, coated with a composition of whiting, glue, and oil, upon which paper bearing certain delineations is laid. On one of the pair—the celestial globe—are represented the stars, so placed that, to an eye supposed to observe them from the centre of the globe, their relative position and distance correspond to those actually observed; while on the terrestrial globe the distribution of land and water, the divisions and subdivisions of the former, together with a few of the most important places, are laid down in the positions corresponding to those which they actually occupy on the surface of the earth.
Globes of india-rubber and gutta-percha have also been made, and others of thin paper, to be inflated and suspended in a school-room. Betts's paper globes fold up when not in use. Embossed globes show, in exaggerated relief, the elevations and depressions of the earth's surface. Compound globes, including the celestial and terrestrial, are made with an outer glass sphere for the celestial, and orrery mechanism to show the varying relative positions of the sun and moon, &c. As school-room apparatus, globes are used for the purpose of illustrating the form and motion of the earth, the position and apparent motion of the fixed stars, and for the mechanical solution of a number of problems in geography and practical astronomy. For this purpose each globe is suspended in a brass ring of somewhat greater diameter, by means of two pins exactly opposite to each other—these pins forming the extremities of the axis round which it revolves, or the north and south poles. This brass circle is then let into a horizontal ring of wood, supported on a stand, as represented in the article ARMILLARY SPHERE; in which the lines drawn on the surface of globes are also explained. The globes in common use in schools are 12 inches in diameter; those found in private libraries are more frequently 18 inches.
The earliest globe made in England was that by Molyneux in 1592, of which an example is still in the library of the Middle Temple.
At the Paris Exhibition of 1889 one of the exhibits was a globe ingeniously designed to show on a realisable scale the proportions of the earth. The globe is on the scale of one millionth of the earth in all respects. The circumference is 40 metres, that of the earth being 40,000 kilometres; the diameter 12,732 metres, corresponding to the 12,732 kilometres of the earth's diameter; and accordingly a metre on the globe represents 1000 kilometres on the earth's surface. The flattening at the poles, which would have amounted to but 21 millimetres, has been disregarded in this globe as being inappreciable. For the same reason the irregularities of the earth's surface are only indicated on the globe by colour, like the other features. The globe, the framework of which is solidly built of iron and wood, is capable of being put in motion. The globe in Leicester Square, London (1851-61), was 60 feet 4 inches in diameter.