This article reminded me of Alan Kay's essay Our Human Condition "From Space" [1], which starts with a discussion of pocket globes: My favorite examples of ear

This article reminded me of Alan Kay's essay Our Human Condition "From Space" [1], which starts with a discussion of pocket globes: My favorite examples of early science, and a wonderful general metaphor for what science does, are the attempts at highly accurate map-making started by the Greeks, then lost for a thousand years, and then taken up again starting in the 15th century. By the end of the 1700s, people delighted in being able to buy a pocket globe of "The World As Seen From Space". 200 years later, we went out into space, looked back at the world, took pictures of it, and saw just what the 18th century map makers had already found out. [1] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2003001_human_cond.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2003001_human_cond.pdf