The other night my wife was painting a wall and had to take the globes off the top of the hutch to move the hutch. As I sat at the table amusing our daughter with one of the globes, I did a bit of a double-take…. and then found myself quite amused. The globe in question is an older 9" Ohio Scientific metal globe of the type primarily meant for kids. I’m not particular fond of these Ohio Scientific globes, actually. Their cartography isn’t overly accurate (I’m sorry, but India does not look like that!), the colors bleed a bit and the lines vary in width – at least with the two that I have. They were probably cheap, mass-produced globes and who knows, the printing on metal may have been advanced for their time. They certainly are more durable than "regular" globes, but they just don’t do a whole lot for me.
However, this particular one earned a bit more interest from me. As I sat there spinning it and pointing things out, I wondered what the three lines were that circled the globe in a curious pattern. On closer examination, next to one of the lines I found the word’s "GLENN’S ORBITAL FLIGHT" and indeed I could then see that the lines did track John Glenn‘s February 1962 flight. Obviously, this helps date the globe, but it’s also just such a sign of a bygone era in so many ways. Today, when space launches by so many nations have become so routine (but obviously still dangerous), it’s hard to think back to a time when space travel was such a enormous interest that a globe manufacturer would actually put it on a globe! (But then again, if they were cheap and easy to produce, why not…)
After I noticed this, I did see a couple of others on e-bay with similar patterns. One even had icons of the space capsule on the orbital lines. (No, I didn’t buy any.) Interesting objects from a different era…
