Translation help needed

[Vaughn]

I'm a collector/dealer of antiques - and I've got this
framed French map of the world, early 19th century.
The legend includes many lines in French - anyone
willing help me with it?

Thanks, Vaughn

[SANDRO43]

Can you post here the French text, or a readable picture of your map ?

(Can you post ....... Damn this 100-character rule ).

[Admin]

Can you post here the French text, or a readable picture of your map ?

(Can you post ....... Damn this 100-character rule ).

OK, OK - I'll turn it off.

- Dan

[Vaughn]

Sandro, thanks so much - I'll have to just type it out in Roman characters for you. I can understand some obvious words, but I know not one word of grammatical French....

L'On a employe dans la construction de cette Carte une methode
particuliere pour decrire les Meridiens et les Paralleles, qui est telle que malgre la grande etendue de la Terre que represente cette Carte tant en Longitude qu'en Latitude, les degres du meridien y sont par tout egaux et ils coupent tous les Paralleles a angles droits
et enfin les degres du meridien ont par tout le rappot le plus appro
che gu ils peuvent avoir avec les degres des Paralleles, desorte que
l'on peut se servir dans toute l'entendue de cette Carte et en tous sens, d' une meme echellede lieues et de Journees, ce que l' on ne
peut pas faire dans la projection Steroegraphigue ou dans tout
autre methode que l' on a employee jusqu' ici pour la construction des Cartes d' une aussi grande etendue.

Sandro, again, thanks for any help in having it make more sense to me...

There are several Pacific voyages and discoveries noted, many dated 1741. Nowhere on this map can I locate a current date - and perhaps it's older than I thought. The west coast (USA) is very distorted, with Puget Sound and Baja peninsula appearing huge in size. West Texas is simply labeled "Apaches". San Francisco is noted, "Pt St Francois".

[SANDRO43]

A particular method to describe meridians and parallels has been used in constructing this map, so that meridian degrees are equal everywhere and cut all parallels at right angles despite the great expanse of the Earth represented on the chart both in longitude and latitude, and finally the meridian degrees have everywhere the closest possible relationship with the parallel degrees, so that one can use them throughout the map and in all directions, in the same scale of places and days (?), which cannot be done in a stereographic projection or with any other method heretofore employed for the construction of charts of such great extension.

Vaughn, is it a Mercator projection, as far as you can tell ?

[SANDRO43]

Thank you, Dan  (23 ch.)

[Vaughn]

Mercator? Geez, I hadn't heard that term in decades
but I just checked Wikipedia and by definition, it is...

Sandro - I appreciate your expertise!

[SANDRO43]

Mercator? Geez, I hadn't heard that term in decades but I just checked Wikipedia and by definition, it is...

Well, the text gave the game away (particularly cut all parallels at square angles, though I should have used right angles but was a bit in a hurry).

Sandro - I appreciate your expertise !

My pleasure. You can demonstrate your appreciation by donating a few doubloons to the Cartographers' Widows & Orphans Foundation .

[docetae]

As I can not attach photo with pm, I continue our talk here :
The map has been done probably between 1770 and 1784, Santini was a famous publisher of the time, he has published one famous Atlas of the world. Most of the map you can find on the Market are in fact part of this book which are sold map per map. Does the text looks like the one below ? If yes, your map was part of one Atlas and it value is between 120 and 250$ depending of it condition.

[Vaughn]

I'll bet more than one RWD member is wondering how Santini's name came up with no lead-in. Well, Docetae and I've been exchanging a few ideas about this map and its age - and through his gentle prodding, I dug a little deeper. Yes, it was crafted by Francois Santini along with Remondini, his assistant.

Docetae, I see no evidence this one's been culled from an atlas at all, it's full size, highlighted with colors, very elegant in style and detail. Yes, the typestyle is very similar to your example, but that style is only indicative of its day, and not the source.

I searched Santini's other works - and there was a beauty of an early map of Moscow - and if I were wealthier, I'd buy and send it to jb, as a show of thanks for his contributions....