2026-10-06 Google Patents, Parallax (Gleason map)
Query 1: https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Gleason&q=map&before=priority:18940101&after=priority:18900101. No results (patents this old carry no priority dates).
Query 2 (Google): Gleason map "patent" 1893 "US497917" ... found the patent.
Result: positive.
US 497,917 A, "Time-Chart", Alexander Gleason [web: https://patents.google.com/patent/US497917A/en]
- Filed 15 Aug 1892, Serial No. 443,074 (no model). Patented 23 May 1893. The map's printed line "Patent allowed November 15, 1892" fits an allowance between these dates.
- Gleason, of Buffalo, N.Y., assigned the patent to the Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Company. Witnesses: James Sangster and Jennie M. Caldwell.
- CPC G09B29/14 (local time charts). Google lists no foreign family members ("Worldwide applications: 0"). The map itself claims applications in England, Canada, France, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Austria [read: page image, flat-map.png]. Those national records were not searched (lead).
- Full PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/78/e3/25/543575d285be1a/US497917.pdf (not downloaded).
What the specification says (read from the page text in screenshots; OCR typos in the source): - The invention is a flat circular map with 24 meridian lines and a periphery divided into minutes of 24 hours, with time reckoned from Greenwich. Two pivoted indicating arms read off the time difference between places. - The map's latitudes and longitudes are said to correspond to those of "all other first class geographical globe maps". - Near the end, Gleason describes how his map departs from a globe map: the "extorsion" (distortion) "consists mainly in the straightening out of the meridian lines". Each meridian keeps its value from Greenwich, "the equator to the two poles". - The single claim covers the combination of the time chart with a circular time dial around the map and the pivoted arms.
Bearing
This is the map-maker's own legal description, from a party with a commercial stake (patent holder and assignee). In it, the flat map is a time-calculating device whose geography agrees with globe maps, and he names its departure from a globe as a distortion. The printed map's slogan, "Scientifically and Practically Correct, As It Is", and Gleason's 1890 and 1893 book Is the Bible from Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? (LoC QB638 .G56, 2nd ed. 1893, 402 pp., Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Co.) argue for a flat Earth (Reuters 2022 snippet; LoC guide). Both statements belong in the record side by side. The reviewers and the reader weigh them. This bears on facts.json's reading of the map (claim 1 illustration).