Giovanni Maria Cassini published his Globo terrestre in Rome in 1790, at the Calcografia Camerale. The globe was printed as a set of engraved paper gores: long, curved segments designed to be cut out and mounted on a sphere.
The terrestrial globe had a diameter of about 34 cm and was based on the geographical knowledge available at the end of the eighteenth century, including information from the voyages of Captain James Cook. Relief was represented pictorially, following the cartographic conventions of the period.
The map was not intended as a single flat world map, but as a globe-gore projection: the terrestrial surface was divided into narrow, lens-shaped segments, each bounded by meridians and adjusted to fit the curvature of the sphere. Cassini’s model consisted of twelve main gores, cut off at about 80° north and south latitude, with the polar regions completed by circular caps.
The project includes fully illustrated instructions in Italian and English.
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