The Library of Congress recently completed
the purchase of the only known extant copy of this map for $10 million, thanks to the generosity of the U.S. Congress, Discovery Channel, Gerald Lenfest, David Koch and several other donors.
For more than 350 years the map was housed in a 16th century castle in Wolfegg, in southern Germany. The introduction
to Waldseemüller's "Cosmographie" is in the Library's Rare
Book and Special Collections Division. This extremely rare work contains the first suggestion that the area of Columbus' discovery be named "America" in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, who recognized that a "New World," the so-called fourth part of the world, had been reached through Columbus' voyage. Before that time, there was no name that collectively identified the Western Hemisphere. The earlier Spanish explorers referred to the area as the Indies believing, as did Columbus, that it was a part of eastern Asia. The Vespucci
Family Papers are housed in the Library's Manuscript
Division.
The Waldseemüller map opens the new Library exhibition "Rivers,
Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America." It is one of the treasures of the Library and of the Geography
and Map Division, which has more than 4.6 million cartographic items in its collections. Many of these items are online in American
Memory, the Library's Web site of more than 120 thematic collections ranging from the papers of U.S. presidents, civil rights leaders and suffragists to early motion pictures, sound recordings, photographs and baseball cards.
A. Waldseemüller, [Map of the World Naming "America," 1507. Geography and Map Division
B. [Portrait of Amerigo Vespucci], Reproduction of anonymous painting. [No date found on item.] Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction No.: LC-USZ62-63115