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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Ptolemy's Geographia

Ptolemy is claimed by geographers as one of the first greats. Back in Anicent Greece "geography" was the study of the earth, the heavens, and the cosmos. Ptolmey proved himself as a Greek geographer with his works Geographia and Almagest.

In Geographia Ptolemy studied the known world from the Canary Islands, to Africa, to the Orient and everything in between. He was one of the first to have a coordinate system on his maps. A neat thing about Ptolemy is that he knew the earth was round in shape and that the Greeks only knew about a quater of the earth's surface.

As a tribute to one of the fields forefathers Catholicgauze offers links to a translated copy of Geographia.

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