A never-born Russian-language earth globe in the Virtual Globes Museum

Abstract. It has been just for more than thirty years that the English-language version of the detachable structural-morphological globe of the Earth with 40 cm diameter produced by the Cartographia Enterprise won the prize of the best demonstration aid (Anson and Gutsell 1989) at the Budapest conference of the International Cartographic Association in August 1989. This success was the result of the cooperation between two education institutions (Kossuth Lajos University and Eötvös Loránd University /ELTE/) and two Hungarian firms (Cartographia Enterprise and School Equipment Producing and Marketing Company). This unique product has been the only thematic earth globe designed and published in Hungary and which was duplicated in a relatively large number. It is a rarity today. This is one of the reasons why this globe has been placed in the Virtual Globes Museum (VGM) (http://terkeptar.elte.hu/vgm). This paper gives an overview of the history of these thematic globes: the Hungarian versions made in 1986 (VGM ID 8, 9, 10) and the English versions published in 1988 (VGM ID 66, 67, 68). It introduces the immediate scientific antecedents of their birth and – being a demonstration aid – the process of publishing. The paper also presents the work with the Russian version of the globe carried out at the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformatics, ELTE (VGM ID 154, 155, 156). This will lead to the expansion of the number of globes in the VGM. The close relationship between the new product and the former two editions is also pointed out.