Science Alive! Episode 3: Rand McNally Globe
David Pantalony and Dave Schellenberg with the Rand McNally Globe
We’ve got the whole world in our hands! This week, Dave explores an iconic object from the Science and Technology Museum, the Rand McNally Globe. Travel around the world without leaving your desk as Dave interviews our curator, David Pantalony.
Transcript
00:00
ha
00:14
a million people have walked past it but
00:17
have you ever taken a close look
00:18
exploring the 6-foot globe at the Museum
00:21
of Science and Technology in this
00:22
edition of science alive and this david
00:25
pantaloni he's a curator here at the
00:27
Museum of Science and Technology David
00:29
welcome and what are we standing in
00:31
front of the big six-foot rand mcnally
00:34
globe from 1967 and where did this used
00:37
to be at the museum well for years it
00:39
was the entrance to the museum and the
00:41
original museum 1967 and then for a long
00:43
time it was also in the canada and space
00:46
exhibition so when you first walked into
00:48
the museum this is the first thing you
00:50
would see yeah it was the big dramatic
00:52
entrance point it was the focus it was
00:54
it was kind of situating the visitors in
00:57
the nineteen sixty seven in their world
00:59
right and what is unique what's special
01:01
about this globe well what's great about
01:03
it is it's from rand mcnally and there
01:05
were several of these around in the
01:08
1960s and libraries institutions around
01:11
north america was kind of the Space Age
01:12
and it was a way of everyone situating
01:15
themselves in the Space Age it was part
01:17
of the imagination at that time and is
01:20
there a feature to on this that you
01:21
really really like well I love that
01:23
prominent 3d physical features of the
01:25
world like here you have the Rocky
01:27
Mountains the painting itself to all the
01:30
different colors took weeks and weeks
01:32
for a whole team at rand mcnally and you
01:34
can see the different colors here the
01:36
different shades for the different
01:37
features they did they even carve some
01:39
of these features with dental tools now
01:41
David on this globe there are some
01:42
cities and there are some cities that
01:44
are missing what do you see when you
01:45
look at well it's interesting where
01:47
there are a lot of cities like you're up
01:48
here the Capitals and that and then in
01:50
on Africa here there's only three Cairo
01:53
Tunis algae or the rest all totally
01:56
blank and because there was nothing in
01:58
there in Africa or well it's just this
02:00
shows the preoccupations or what they're
02:02
not interested in at the time right or
02:04
what the visitors weren't interested in
02:05
or what Rand McNally thought wasn't
02:08
interesting here it's exactly here we
02:09
have Ottawa so this was made for an
02:13
autumn audience there's a little it's in
02:14
light red there and then Washington is
02:17
in in black so you have two cities in
02:19
North America here whoa and mexico in
02:21
mexico city and what I is interesting
02:23
too is I see there's provinces in Canada
02:25
but no States yeah so it was
02:28
only because it was made for the
02:30
Canadian audience so you'll see all the
02:32
little very faint borders there of the
02:33
Canadian provinces David pet alonia
02:35
curator here at the Museum assigns the
02:37
technology thank you for joining us
02:38
thank you
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