Solar System in Delorme Headquarter in Yarmouth, ME

Eartha is the world's largest rotating and revolving

globe A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model globe ...

, located within the former headquarters of the

DeLorme DeLorme is the producer of personal satellite tracking, messaging, and navigation technology. The company’s main product, ''inReach'', integrates GPS and satellite technologies. ''inReach'' provides the ability to send and receive text messages ...

mapping corporation in

Yarmouth, Maine Yarmouth is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States, twelve miles north of the state's largest city, Portland. When originally settled in 1636, as North Yarmouth, it was part of Massachusetts, and remained as such for 213 years. In 18 ...

Garmin Garmin Ltd. (shortened to Garmin, stylized as GARMIN, and formerly known as ProNav) is an American, Swiss-domiciled multinational technology company founded in 1989 by Gary Burrell and Min Kao in Lenexa, Kansas, United States, with headquart ...

purchased the company and the building in 2016. The globe weighs approximately 5,600 pounds (2,500 kg), and has a diameter of over 41 feet (12.5 m).

Construction

The globe was built with a scale of 1:1,000,000, on which one inch represents sixteen miles (1mm = 1km). As with most globes, it is mounted at a 23.5 degree angle, the same axial tilt as the Earth itself; thus the

equator The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can als ...

is diagonal to the floor. It uses a

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cant ...

mount with two motors, and simulates one day's revolution and rotation every 18 minutes, though it is possible for the motors to fully rotate the globe in as little as one minute. The globe was completed in 1998, after two years of construction and planning, and it uses a composite database built from satellite imagery,

shaded relief Terrain cartography or relief mapping is the depiction of the shape of the surface of the Earth on a map, using one or more of several techniques that have been developed. Terrain or relief is an essential aspect of physical geography, and as su ...

, colored

bathymetry Bathymetry (; ) is the study of underwater depth of ocean floors (''seabed topography''), lake floors, or river floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The first recorded evidence of water ...

, and information about road networks and urban areas. The database used to generate the surface images was approximately 140 gigabytes. Former CEO of DeLorme Maps, David DeLorme, designed the globe, while Lewiston-based surveyor and civil engineer, Vincent J.P. Leblanc, was involved in the building project. Map technician Jeff Clark was responsible for the 792 plastic sections that cover the rotating globe. Eartha is contained in an

atrium Atrium may refer to: Anatomy * Atrium (heart), an anatomical structure of the heart * Atrium, the genital structure next to the genital aperture in the reproductive system of gastropods * Atrium of the ventricular system of the brain * Pulmona ...

with several glass walls that allow it to be seen from outside of the building; it is readily visible from

U.S. Route 1 U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 (US 1) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, making ...

. At night, the globe is illuminated. Eartha is constructed around a

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...

structure which is called ''Omni-Span'', and consists of over 6000 pieces of aluminum tubing. This is covered by a skin of 792 map panels, each covering 8 degrees of

latitude In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pol ...

and 10 degrees of

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east– west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lette ...

, and attached to the trusses with a custom-designed system of hidden bolts.

Public viewing

The atrium containing Eartha is open to the public during business hours. There was an adjacent gift shop that carried various DeLorme and geography-related products, which closed in 2016 when Garmin purchased DeLorme. The mounting equipment is in a large pit below floor level and is visible to visitors, but the stairway down is chained off to prevent public access. There are two balconies that allow visitors to more easily view the higher parts of the globe. Some offices within the building also have views overlooking Eartha. Eartha was originally designed to be in diameter. In 1999, surveyors hired by the '' Guinness Book of World Records'' measured the globe at . The previous record holder is the

Globe of Peace The Globe of Peace ( it, Mappamondo della Pace) is a large globe located in Apecchio, Pesaro, Italy. It was the Guinness Book of World Records record holder for the world's largest rotating globe until 1999, when it was succeeded by Eartha. It ...

located in

Apecchio Apecchio is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Pesaro e Urbino in the Italian region Marche, located about west of Ancona and about southwest of Pesaro. It lies on the border between Marche and Umbria and is crossed by the Biscubio an ...

, Pesaro,

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

References

Globes {{coord, 43.807922, N, 70.164008, W, display=title

Construction

Public viewing

See also

References