The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who Revolutionised Geography. Andrew Taylor

NEW TECHNIQUE OF PRINTING, as much as advances in geographic knowledge, had rendered Behaim’s unique, hand-painted globe of 1492 obsolete. By the early sixteenth century, most of the scores of printing houses scattered across northern Europe were producing not only typescript but also pictures and maps; the printed globe, like the book whose technology it had adapted, was sweeping across the continent. The roots of Mercator’s future commercial success lay in mastering this rapidly developing medium.

      Printing had established itself in Leuven within twenty years after the first books came off the presses in Germany,^* but the change from woodcuts to the more delicate copperplate in the mid – sixteenth century transformed the Netherlands into Europe’s unchallenged center for mapmaking and map publishing. The jewelry trade, which had developed from Antwerp’s traditional commerce in gold and precious stones, had attracted the finest line engravers in the world to the city. Gaspard was only one of many goldsmiths who had adapted his traditional skills to the rapidly expanding and profitable business of printing.