henrY Leiter Photography | Columbus Ohio

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Eartha-Guinness World Record Holder-Yarmouth-Maine

Eartha, nestled inside the DeLorme headquarters located in Yarmouth, Maine.

The DeLorme headquarters, home of Eartha located in Yarmouth, Maine.

Meet Eartha, the world's largest rotating and revolving globe. Eartha is located inside the DeLorme headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine. DeLorme is a producer of personal satellite tracking, messaging, and navigation technology. The company was founded in 1976 by David DeLorme. He supposedly was frustrated with the obsolete back-country maps of the Moosehead Lake Region of Maine, and vowed to create a better map of Maine.

David DeLorme wanted to create something big to mark his company in the physical world, so he designed Eartha. It took two years to build and construction was finished in 1998. Officials from Guinness World Records measured it in 1999, and it still holds the record today at 41.5 ft in diameter. Eartha was built with a scale of 1:1,000,000, on which one inch represents approximately 16 miles. It is mounted at a 23.5 degree angle, to simulate the Earth's axis and simulates one day's revolution and rotation every hour. 

The surface of Eartha is composed of 792 panels. The panels are a special composite database that took over a year to compile from satellite imagery, shaded relief, colored bathymetry, and terrestrial sources such as road networks and urban areas. The printed Eartha database is equivalent to 140 gigabytes, making it one of the largest in the world. Eartha's "skeleton" is the Omni-Span™ structure, which is a Delorme developed system of over 6,000 lightweight aluminum tubing pieces. 

Eartha represents Earth as it seen from space. It is a very beautiful and inspiring structure to witness. It is open to the public for viewing during business hours, and is housed in a three-story glass atrium with three different observation levels located inside, and the building is illuminated at night so viewers can observe Eartha through the glass. There is also a gift shop that carries various DeLorme and geography related products. 

"Eartha will instill a sense of wonder in people when they first see it and we hope they walk away from it with a better appreciation and knowledge of the world around them." - David DeLorme

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Delorme Headquarters
2 DeLorme Drive
Yarmouth, ME 

+1 (800) 642-0970 or +1 (207) 846-7100
http://www.delorme.com