Big Eartha

With a diameter of 12.5 metres, the 1:1,000,000 scale, three-ton Eartha, built in the lobby of map publisher DeLorme, is the world’s largest rotating globe.

Housed in a three-story glass atrium at the company’s headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine, Eartha took two years to build and represents Earth as it is seen from space. Every continent is beautifully detailed, with vivid colors illustrating all levels of vegetation, major roadways and cities. Ocean depths are also completely represented.

Amazingly, if you’ve got $6 million or so jangling in your pocket, you can get one too (smaller ones cost less). Anyone? Anyone? Via Gadling.

Posted on Saturday, September 10, 2005 at 10:41 AM
Categories: Globes

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Comments

I had the good fortune of seeing this beauty up close about a year ago while visiting friends who moved to Yarmouth. In addition to rotating about its axis, the globe also mimicks the Earth’s revolution (to a small degree, of course) by revolving on a cantilevered arm that circles around its base. The combined effect of the two motions is quite nice. It felt like the Earth was looming over me. Definitely worth a visit. (BTW: The printed imagery of Eartha amounts to 140 gigabytes of data.)

Dan Ambrosi | 09/11/2005 at 7:03 PM | #

I saw this so incredible big Eartha when visiting Maine last year. it’s very nice to feel like a giant looking at small cities… :-)

Graeme | 09/12/2005 at 11:07 AM | #

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