Published by Millennium House of Australia, the Earth Platinum is an exhaustive venture into mapping everything from forgotten towns too small to appear on conventional maps, tiny brooks, detailed mountain ranges and even shipwrecks. So great is the detail in the Earth Platinum that over 100 professionals located all about the globe and including photographers, cartographers, computer programmers and a shipwreck expert were employed in its creation.
Measuring in at approximately 1.8 m high by 1.4 m wide and weighing no less than 150 kilograms there is little doubt that the Earth Platinum is the world’s largest atlas, surpassing that of the Klencke Atlas - created in 1660 and presented as a gift to King Charles II, and now housed only in the British Museum – and that of Earth, another atlas created in 2009.
Earth Platinum is the brainchild of Gordon Cheers, Managing Director at Millennium House, based on an idea he harbored some 25 years whilst working on a large collection of maps on Australia. At the time and for years later this project was seen by subsequent editors as too costly to produce.
Fortunately for map lovers the world over, some six years ago, Cheers set up his own publishing company and produced Earth Blue and Earth Gold, thus paving the way for the eventual Earth Platinum.
Despite the will to execute the project, creating the world’s biggest ever book, was not without its trials. Printers had to be sourced that were capable of producing full size copies of the maps, fact checking would take place, done by cartographers in house studying maps greater than 6ft in height and then sent to other expert cartographers around the world and then of course there was checking and re-checking.
And if this wasn’t enough, only one printing house in Italy were prepared to take on the project of printing the atlas. Then the task of binding an atlas of this size was charged to a company in Hong Kong.
Not only is the Earth Platinum the world’s largest book, at US$100,000.00 per copy (of which there are but 31) it could also stake a claim for being one of the most expensive in contemporary times. Of course, the people from Guinness have been in touch. Chris Sheedy from Guinness World Records says that once Earth Platinum has finished final production in early 2012 it will enter the Guinness World Records:
“We at Guinness World Records are thrilled and honored to be witnessing the production of what we're sure will be the world's largest atlas. It will represent the breaking of a record that has stood since circa 1660 and, in this era of digital content, will provide a unique, valuable, enduring and unforgettable perspective on the world we live in.”
Given that the Earth Platinum was thought up and conceived in Australia, printed in Italy, bound in China and edited and re-edited by a team all over the world, this truly represents a global effort worthy of an atlas of such grandeur and detail. In the words of Gordon Cheers:
“It may take another 350 years before anyone challenges our atlas. However, my feeling is it will never happen. Earth Platinum will become a priceless piece of art work/historical document representing our world today.
Richard McColl - I am a freelance writer from deepest darkest London but for the past 10 years or so I have been maintaining my extended "writing break" in ...
