Martin Waldseemüller (Ilacomilus) (c. 1473-1519)

Martin Walseemüller and his collaborator, Matthias Ringmann, are credited with the first recorded usage of the word America to name the New World in honour of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

He was born about 1475, most probably in the village of Wolfenweiler near Freiburg in Breisgau (southern Germany). He studied at the University of Freiburg, where he met Johann Scott, the future printer of Waldseemüller’s edition of Ptolemy and Matthias Ringman, a poet who wrote Waldseemüller’s texts. Gregor Reisch was their tutor. He was noted for his philosophical work, Margaretha Philosophica (1503), a widely read book that included a world map in Ptolemaic form. He undoubtedly aroused the students’ interest in cosmography.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Walseemüller moved to St.Dié in the Vosges. He Hellenized his name to Ilacomilus and worked on an edition of Ptolemy. He learned the printing trade in Basle and became a professor of cosmography under the patronage of René II, Duke of Lorraine.

Together with a group of scholars, among them were Nicholas Lud and Matthias Ringmann, they installed a printing press in St. Dié. The first book appeared in 1507: Cosmographiae Introductio… Few books have generated as much interest and speculation as this book because it suggested that the new continent is named America in honour of Amerigo Vespucci, whose letters about his American “discoveries” form a large part of the book. Great interest was also attached to the two maps on the title page constituting part of the Cosmographiae Introductio: a large 12-panel wall map of the world and a set of globe gores. The map and globe were notable for showing the New World as a continent separate from Asia and naming the southern landmass America.

Ringmann wrote the Cosmographiae Introductio's text, using the name ‘America’. He died in 1511, and by then, Waldseemüller was having doubts about the name they had coined.

In 1511, Walseemüller published the Carta Itineraria Europae, a road map of Europe that showed essential trade routes and pilgrim routes from central Europe to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It was the first printed wall map of Europe.
After Ringmann’s death, Waldseemüller concentrated on the new version of Ptolemy’s Geographia. Johannes Scott finally printed the new edition in 1513 in Strasbourg, and it is now regarded as the most important. Waldseemüller included twenty modern maps in the new Geographia as a separate appendix.

The 1507 wall map was lost for a long time, but Joseph Fischer found a copy in Schloss Wolfegg in southern Germany in 1901. It is the only known copy purchased by the United States Library of Congress in May 2003.

Claudius Ptolemy (c.100 – c.170 AD)

Claudius Ptolemaeus was a Greek astronomer, mathematician, and geographer who lived in Alexandria during the 2nd century. Much of medieval astronomy and geography were built on his ideas. He was the first to use longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates. This idea of a global coordinates system was highly influential, and we use a similar system today.

Ptolemy wrote several scientific treatises. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, and the second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the Apotelesmatika, an astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day.

The Geographia is a compilation of geographical coordinates of the part of the world known to the Roman Empire during his time. However, the maps in surviving manuscripts of Ptolemy's Geography only date from about 1300, after Maximus Planudes rediscovered the text. It seems likely that the topographical tables are cumulative texts—texts that were altered and added to as new knowledge became available in the centuries after Ptolemy.

The earliest printed edition with engraved maps was produced in Bologna in 1477, followed quickly by a Roman edition in 1478. An edition printed at Ulm in 1482, including woodcut maps, was the first one published north of the Alps.