In the 18^th century, having an understanding of geography became an essential component of what it meant to be an educated person, to engage in conversation in polite society, and this was men, but this was also women. Geography was also needed in the performance of a number of jobs, and a number of industries and professions being born out of global trade and exploration in the 18^th century. So increasingly, merchants and officials needed to understand geography and globes were one of the tools that gave people that knowledge.

A very early advertisement for a pocket globe described it as a globe made portable for the pocket. It was produced by globe makers as part of a whole range of different size globes that they would offer, so a pocket globe being the smallest on offer normally, would be much more affordable than say a table or a floor globe, something that would be placed in a library. So they were much more accessible to a wider market of people.

So globes were often accompanied by printed manuals which would instruct their owner about how they could be used and what you could do with your globe, what calculations you could perform. Pocket globes weren't accompanied by any instructional manuals, and as a result, today we have a fairly limited understanding of their purpose and how they were used, but we do have some ideas. So because of the small size, we know that they wouldn't have been really appropriate for performing any navigational calculations. You're limited by what you can show on this globe and how much detail you can include on it.

So it's quite possible that they were used as an Aide-mémoire to be able to be quickly consulted for pieces of geographic knowledge. So we think it's also likely that pocket globes were also used for the instruction of children, for young boys, and of course, we don't have an innate understanding that the world is a sphere. That's something that is learnt and something that is taught, and globes play a role in helping us conceptualise the Earth and where we sit upon it.

And we think that they were also something of a status symbol. So we know it was important for an educated person to have an understanding of geography, and a globe is a visual symbol that conveys that you possess that knowledge. And of course, it's important to have up to date knowledge, and so having a current globe with the latest expeditions and voyages marked on it marked that you were a knowledgeable person.

When the popularity of pocket globes peaked in the 18^th century, the methods of creating a globe like this one were quite old, and by the time this globe was created in 1791, they'd been marketed in England for more than a hundred years. So their popularity and the novelty of them wasn't really to do with any particular innovation in how these were produced. It was about the context at the time, the immense interest in geographical knowledge, the immense appetite for information about voyages and expeditions. So accounts of voyages were hugely popular, captured the public imagination. People of course were buying atlases, maps and globes like this one as well.

This pocket globe was produced after a wave of major European expeditions, particularly into the Pacific, that changed European understanding of the entire globe. And when you look at the surface of the globe, you'll notice it's not just a map that has borders and coastlines. It's covered with the tracks of different voyages and expeditions.

So this globe has the tracks of Cook's three voyages on it, but also importantly, there's an annotation to show where Cook was killed. So there's no guide and there's no other information that came with this globe. It obviously reflects that its owner had an understanding of these voyages that were being undertaken at the time, understood Cook, understood what he was doing, and knew of his death as well.

The reason why we still have a number of pocket globes is, in no small part, due to the cases. So these cases have protected them over the centuries. This one, which has a sharkskin cover, creates quite a durable surface to the case, but also a waterproofing element to it as well. So the typical pocket globe would have a case with celestial gores inside it. So you could have your terrestrial globe sitting in a case that reflected the heavens, and you could have a little mini cosmos there.

So this pocket globe is interesting because it’s a departure from that. So in one hemisphere, we have a table of figures, which lists different cities that haven't been included on the terrestrial map on the globe itself. It lists the country, the continent, and their latitude and longitude, so it's quite a practical piece of information there.

In the other hemisphere, we have a very curious map, described as "the world is known in Caesar's time", which is reflecting the world as it was understood by the Roman Empire during the Roman Empire. It's an incredibly symbolic choice. The Roman Empire was of course the subject of much interest. There were publications like Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the decades before this globe was created. But the Roman Empire, of course, has parallels to the mighty British Empire.

It's quite a statement to say, "This is what was known of the world during the great Roman Empire, but look at what we know about the world now. Look at the reach of the British Empire", and this parallel wouldn't have been lost on the owner of this globe.

This globe was created by John and William Cary. So at the age of 15, John Cary was apprentice to an engraver and that's where he learnt his craft, and he eventually established his own firm, and it would become one of the most successful firms in London in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries. So he produced a really wide range of canal maps and county plans, road maps, town maps, atlases, geological maps, and globes as well, and that is where his brother William Cary comes into the picture.

So William Cary was an instrument maker, and he learnt his trade through an apprenticeship as well. So he had his own business and he produced things like telescopes and navigational instruments. But together, the brothers collaborated on making globes, and that reflects that globes were more complex to make than maps, involved more of an intersection of the skills of the mapmaker and the instrument maker.

So for a pocket globe, really, the first step is creating the shell which is one of the bases of the globe itself. So this was really done using a mould which then two hemispheres would be created by pasting strips of paper onto it, like paper mâché. These hemispheres would then be removed from the mould, attached together and plastered over to create a really smooth surface. You would then attach the gores onto this surface. So gores are segments of a map that have been printed specially for a globe.

On the walls here, on the western and eastern side of this gallery, we can see examples of gores that have been created for much larger globes. We have a celestial set and a terrestrial set as well. So it's much tricker to attach the gores than might be immediately apparent, because they all have to align perfectly on this small surface. There's concerns that the paper might stretch, so all of this has to be factored in which designing the gores, designing the map, engraving it and attaching them as well. Then often, with pocket globes, what would happen is brass pins would be added at each pole, at the north and south, and these would enable the globe to sit within a case and be turned within that case, and we can see that here.