No matter how heavily they try on , most maps have an image problem . They ’re flat , while the Earth ( despoiler alarum ) is not , and the difficulty of squashing a ball-shaped cast onto a mat target produce all kinds of distortions .
TheMappariumin the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston lets you experience the Earth ’s geography without as many compromise . The room includes a three - tarradiddle , stain glass globe that you could in reality take the air at bottom of and , as Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura note in thevideo above , the Continent are reproduced in pure proportional scale . That think of you’re able to get an accurate sense of how full-grown ( or small ) Texas really is , compared to , say , Greenland .
Many of the features on the map are not , however , accurately labeled , at least in the way of life we would recognise them today . The label on the field glass are stuck in 1935 , the twelvemonth the single-valued function debuted in the Christian Science Publishing Society building . The building ’s designer , Chester Lindsay Churchill , saw the Mapparium ( originally called “ the Glass Room ” or “ the Globe Room ” ) as a symbol for the orbicular outreach ofThe Christian Science Monitor . The gore were originally designed to be replaceable — Churchill must have fuck 1935 ’s political boundaries and interior names would n’t last forever — but Christian Science officials have seen fit to keep it preserved as a body of work of artistic creation , rather than something that should be constantly edited .
Today , the room also function as an example of a whisper gallery — a spherical or orbitual room with acoustics that allow a person whispering in one corner to be heard in another , even if it ’s relatively far away ( Grand Central Terminal includesa celebrated example ) . The Mapparium ’s form also creates other interesting acoustical features — the great unwashed speaking in the center of the elbow room will sound much louder than usual . It ’s a fun station to stand while you seek to pronounce all the names of berth that no longer exist .
cope image viaSmartDestinations , Flickr//CC BY - SA 2.0
