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Nom
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Vaugondy Didier Robert de
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Date de naissance
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1723-06-00
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Date de mort
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1786-00-00
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Lieu de naissance
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Paris
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Lieu de mort
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Paris
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Couverture temporelle
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3/4 18th century
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Biographie
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The son of Gilles Robert Vaugondy, mathematical practitioner and map-maker, educated as a geographer by his father, Didier Robert de Vaugondy broke with the family tradition of producing only maps by undertaking globe production. His first set of terrestrial gores were published in 1744, accompanied by a short manuel and he seems to have published an armillary sphere at about the same time1. Using these gores, Vaugondy prepared a 6inch globe which he presented to Louis XV in 1750 in support of a request for a position as 'géographe ordinaire du Roi'. According to himself it was in discussion with the king, when he explained the impossibility of demonstrating on a small globe that the earth was an oblate spheroid, that Louis commanded him to produce a globe of 6 feet diameter2, and globes of 18inches for the use of the navy. These were immediately prepared and presented to the king on 14 April 1751. Shortly afterwards Didier issued a prospectus inviting subscriptions for the globe pair and describing them. The price ranged from 600 to 1000 livres depending on the form and decoration of the stand. A copy of his Usage des globes was offered with the globes which incorporated several mechanical innovations in their mounting3.
While the 18 inch globes moved forward relatively smoothly, building of the 6 feet globe ran into the problem of where to construct it as the Vaugondy premises were far too small. Plans to create a workshop for it in the Louvre ran into administrative opposition and were finally vetoed as being too expensive. The project for the globe was abandoned shortly afterwards4. Nonetheless Vaugondy's reputation as a globe-maker was established. He was commissioned to write the article on globe-making for the Encyclopédie. Adventurous, he produced a pair of glass globes although as it is mentioned in none of his catalogues it was presumably not in regular production. A twenty-nine inch Copernican sphere developed in 1773 to special order was however included in his 1777 catalogue. At the end of his life Vaugondy worked on the project for an 8ft diameter globe known as the Berdgevin globe, although this was only completed nine years after his death (5).
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Notes biographiques
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1 Pedley 39.
2 Usage des globes, Preface, ii.
3 Affiches 5 October 1752, 622. Pedley 44.
4 Pedley 44; Pedley (Globusfreunde), passim.
5 Pedley 48-9.. see also Destombes, passim. For the Vaugondy map production which has here been neglected see Pedley passim.
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Bibliographie
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Abrégé des differens systèmes du monde, de la sphère et des usages des globes, suivant les hypothèses de Ptolomée et de Copernic, Paris (Durand), 1745
Usage des globes, Paris (Antoine Boudet), 1751
Uso de los globos y la sphera...traducido...extracto y aumentado por los Cathedraticos de mathematicas de la Universita de Salamanca el Doct. D. Diego de Torres Villarroel y el Doct. D. Isidoro ortiz Gallardo, y Villaroel..., Salamanca, n.d. [1758]
Essai sur l'histoire de la géographie, Paris (Boudet) 1755, reprinted as 'Préface historique…' to the Atlas universel of 1757.
4 Observations critiques sur les nouvelles découvertes de l'Amiral de la Fuente…, Paris (Antoine Boudet) 1753.
5 Réponse… au Lettre de M. Buache…sur les nouvelles découvertes &c, Paris (Antoine Boudet) 1754.
6 'Géographie' & 'Construction mécanique des globes' in D. Diderot & J. D'Alembert, L'Encyclopédie, vii, Paris 1757 , 707-711a.
7 Mémoire sur les différens accroisements de la ville de Paris depuis César jusqu'à présennt…pour servir à l'intelligence au nouveau plan de cette ville…,Paris (Vaugondy & Boudet) 1760.
8 Tablettes parisiennes, Paris (Vaugondy) 1760.
9 Les promenades des environs de Paris, Paris (Vaugondy & Boudet) 1761.
10 'Discours sur l'étude de la géographie' in Nouvel Atlad portatif, Paris (Vaugondy), 1762.
11 Uranographie, Paris (Vaugondy & Boudet) 1764.
12 Institutions géographiques, Paris (Boudet & Desaint), 1766.
13 Lettre de M. Robert de Vaugondy à M. … au sujet d'une carte systématique des pays septentrionaux de l'Asie et de l'Amérique, Paris (Boudet) 1768.
14 Mémoire sur les pays de l'Asie et de l'Amérique, situés au nord de la mer du Sud: accompagné d'une carte…,Paris (Vaugondy & Boudet) 1774.
15 Description et usages de la sphère armillaire, suivant le systèème de Copernic…,, Paris (Vaugondy & Boudet), 1771.
16 Mémoire sur une question de la géographie pratique: si l'applatissement de la terre peut être rendu sensible sur les cartes, Paris (Vaugondy & Boudet) 1775.
17 Explication et usages du planisphère céleste de Robert de Vaugondy, n.p.[Paris], n.d. [between 1763 & 1786]
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Identifiant
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244
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ark:/18469/1sjww