A History of Columbus World Globes

Columbus globes are featured throughout JustGlobes. They range from around £100 all the way up to over £25,000. They also produce some of the national geographic globes features on JustGlobes. This page is dedicated to the history of this illustrious globe manufacturer.

Columbus Globes was originally known as "the publishing house" and was based in Berlin in Germany. It opened in 1909. Its founder was called Paul Oestergaard, his vision was to bring high quality reference globes to the general public. This was ambitious as at the time high quality reference globes were largely too expensive to be supplied to the general public.

The globes the Mr Oestergaard produced had superior cartography and were sold at a more affordable price than competitors at the time. The globes became so successful that they were soon manufactured in 24 languages and sold across the world. Within a decade the factory in Berlin did not have the capacity to fulfil its orders.

During the second world war, the Columbus factory and administration buildings were severely damaged, as well as the Oestergaard household. This prompted the Oestergaard family along with Columbus Globes to move to Stuttgart. New manufacturing facilities lead to the creation of the DUO globe. This new globe was patented as the first "dual mapping" globe ever created, where the mapping changes from physical to political as the globe itself is illuminated.

In 1963, the third Oestergaard generation took over the company. Peter Oestergaard was a machine builder by trade, this helped the design and production of the globes. Peter Oestergaard was instrumental in producing the DUPLEX globe, which was a world first. It was the first globe to be made from plastic, its process was also mostly automated for maximum efficiency.

In 1972 a new type of globe was once again created at Columbus Globes. It was simply called the Planet Earth. This was arguably the most information-rich desktop globe ever produced up to this point. To this day the Planet Earth (see above picture) is available from JustGlobes with the same impressive features as approximately 40 years ago. The Planet Earth shows a display of day, night and twilight, as well as the cycle of seasons.

Following the re-unification of Germany and the steady collapse of the USSR from 1993 onwards, the Oestergaard family moved again to a much larger factory to enable a move to a digit cartography format. this allows for a more cost efficient and fast way to update cartography. This also enabled the whole company to operate under the same building where the family could have better control of the final product.

In 1999 Columbus Globes took over another speciality globe maker who was among the last still producing hand-laminated, mouth-blown crystal spheres for cartographic globes. The acquisition of this manufacturing process has essentially preserved this particular method of globe making from going extinct. The Black Forest and Bremen models available on JustGlobes are made from this method.