Physical globe

The physical globe of Earth in the collection of the Wincent Pol’s Manor is the first object issued after the World War II. The authors of the map are Gustaw Wuttke (1887-1975) – a geographer, versatile educator, ministerial instructor, constructor (he designed and himself made 96 teaching aids, 24 of which went into production and school use) – and Andrzej Lorentski (1914-1988), an author of school textbooks, and a geographer and cartographer. Considering the destruction of teaching aids during the war, when the entire production of the Lviv publishing house Książnica-Atlas – atlases, maps and globes – was destroyed after the Russians entered Lviv on September 17th, 1939, it became necessary to equip Polish schools with basic teaching aids.

The 1946 globe has a physical content (scale 1:40 million). The shape of the Earth’s surface (hypsometry), presented in colours from green to red, does not relate to the pre-war globes of Eugeniusz Romer. Itis marked by: depression, 0, 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000, and the depth by isolines: 0, 200, 2000, 4000, 6000. What is important is the replacement of the 300 m level indicator used by Romer with a 200 m one, which contributed to the enlargement of upland areas within the range of 200-500 m. The remaining content of the map is not very rich, it is limited to the largest rivers (in Poland – Vistula and Odra), canals, lakes, wetlands and desert areas, and capitals and – depending on the space available – major cities (in Poland – Warsaw and Krakow). In the oceans, sea currents are included, marked with black lines and names. In reference to historical globes, it was equipped with a 360-degree meridian circle. The ball was mounted on a wooden roller leg and a wooden base. The globe was donated to the museum in 1983 by the management of the Primary School in Wola Skromowska. A year later, Jan Lipkowski from Radom donated a second copy of this edition.

Grażyna Połuszejko