Waldseemüller and the name America
In 1507 a small group of scholars in Saint-Dié, in Lorraine, printed a large wall map of the world titled Universalis Cosmographia. It was drawn by Martin Waldseemüller, printed from twelve woodcut blocks, and measures roughly 2.4 by 1.3 metres when the sheets are assembled.
It was the first map to use the name America. The word is placed on the southern part of the new continent and honours Amerigo Vespucci, whose accounts of voyages to the new lands were widely read. The accompanying booklet, the Cosmographiae Introductio, written by Matthias Ringmann, explained the choice.
A name that stayed
Waldseemüller seems to have had second thoughts. His Carta Marina of 1516 leaves the name out. By then it had spread through other maps, and on Mercator's world map of 1538 it was applied to both continents of the New World.
Perhaps a thousand copies of the 1507 map were printed, and one is known to survive. It was found in 1901 in the library of Wolfegg Castle in southern Germany and was bought by the Library of Congress in 2003, where it is now on display.