Two plates, as printed
1507 beside c. 1650
Nothing is redrawn. Each column is what that sheet actually shows. Read both records before deciding they rhyme.
1507
Universalis Cosmographia
Martin Waldseemüller
Period original
What this plate depicts
A twelve-sheet world map. The Atlantic is open. A separate western landmass is drawn apart from Asia. The name America appears on this map — the first printed use of the name. The Pacific is not yet a surveyed ocean. North America’s west coast is not a measured California; it is an unfinished edge of a newly named world.
- Source
- Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (the 1507 world map).
- License
- Public domain (published 1507).
c. 1650
California as an island
Joan Vinckeboons (Johannes Vingboons)
Period original
What this plate depicts
California is drawn as a large, carrot-shaped island off western North America, separated by a gulf labeled as a sea. Coastal names, bays, and islands are written on the island’s Pacific face. The mainland to the east is a separate mass. This is what the plate actually claims: an insular California, not a peninsula. The depiction circulated on European maps for about a century after Spanish coastal reconnaissance had already found Baja attached.
- Source
- Library of Congress; Wikimedia Commons scan of the c. 1650 manuscript.
- License
- Public domain.