The First Map with the Name America

IN April of the year I507 the German scholar, Martin H. Waldseemiiller, called also Ilacomilus, published at St. Die in the Vosges mountains of Alsace his Cosmographiae Introductio,' in which the suggestion is made that Americn be the name applied to the New World. Upon the title page, in the dedicatioa to Emperor Maximilian, and again on the reverse side of a larger inserted leaf with the figure of a sphere reference is made to a representation of the world tam in solido quam plano (as well in a solid [globe] as in a plane map), made to accompany the cosmography. In I900 Professor Joseph Fischer found at the Castle Wolfegg in Wurttemberg a magnificent map in twelve sheets, corresponding to the description indicated by Waldseemiiller in his Cosmography. In I90I the distinguished cartographer F. R. von Wieser published a note about this remarkable map,2 with the description of the map of I507 and the Marine Chart of I516 by Waldseemiiller which was found with the map of I507 bound in the same volume. In the year 1903 Fischer and Wieser published fine facsimiles of the two Waldseemiiller maps with accompanying text in English and German. Since that date scholars have accepted the map of I507 as the first with the name America. At the time of its discovery the map of I507 was also the first printed map containing a delineation of the New World; but recently the British Museum acquired a map3 with date I506 by an Italian, Contarini, containing a representation of the New World. Scholars in general accept this map as the earliest printed map as yet known containing the New World

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