---
title: "History of cartography"
chunk: 11/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:26.449661+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

1500: The Spanish cartographer and explorer Juan de la Cosa created the first known cartographic representations showing both the Americas as well as Africa and Eurasia.
1502: Unknown Portuguese cartographer made the Cantino planisphere, the first nautical chart to implicitly represent latitudes.
1504: Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel made the oldest known nautical chart with a scale of latitudes.
1519 : Portuguese cartographers Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel and Jorge Reinel made the group of maps known today as the Miller Atlas or Lopo Homem – Reinéis Atlas.
1530: Alonzo de Santa Cruz, Spanish cartographer, produced the first map of magnetic variations from true north. He believed it would be of use in finding the correct longitude. Santa Cruz also designed new nautical instruments, and was interested in navigational methods.

==== Padrón Real of the Spanish Empire ====

Founded 1504 in Seville, the Spanish House of Trade (Casa de Contratación) kept a large contingent of cartographers as Spain's overseas empire expanded. A royal standard map (Padrón Real) was established in 1508 and updated periodically as more information became available from major expeditions returning to Seville. This continued a practice of long standing in Portugal, whose Padrão Real was kept in the Guinea and India Houses (Casa da Guiné and da Índia) within the royal palace in Lisbon.
The originals of the Spanish and Portuguese maps are now lost but copies of known provenance are held by the Vatican Library; the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, Italy; and the Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, Germany. The 1527 and 1529 copies of the Padrón Real under Diogo Ribeiro, a Portuguese cartographer working for Spain, are particularly praised as the first scientific world map. Incorporating information from the Magellan, Gómez, and Loaysa expeditions and the geodesic research undertaken to codify the demarcation lines established by the treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza, these editions of the Padrón Real show for the first time the full extension of the Pacific Ocean and the continuous coast of North America. They also very precisely delineate the coasts of Central and South America, although Portugal's control of the African trade routes left the Indian Ocean less exact.
Two prominent cosmographers (as mapmakers were then known) of the House of Trade were Alonso de Santa Cruz and Juan López de Velasco, who directed mapmaking under Philip II without ever going to the New World. Their maps were based on information they received from returning navigators. Using repeatable principles that underpin mapmaking, their mapmaking techniques could be employed anywhere. Philip II sought extensive information about his overseas empire, both in written textual form and in the production of maps.

=== German cartography ===

15th century: The German monk Nicolaus Germanus wrote a pioneering Cosmographia. He added the first new maps to Ptolemy's Geographica. Germanus invented the Donis map projection where parallels of latitude are made equidistant, but meridians converge toward the poles.
1492: German merchant Martin Behaim (1459–1507) made the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, but it lacked the Americas.
1507: German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's world map (Waldseemüller map) was the first to use the term America for the Western continents (after explorer Amerigo Vespucci).
1603: German Johann Bayer's star atlas (Uranometria) was published in Augsburg in 1603 and was the first atlas to cover the entire celestial sphere.
 

=== Dutch and Flemish cartography ===