The map, though designed to reject modern astronomy, owes much to contemporary print culture. Its circular world is arranged on a square base that resembles a roulette table, complete with spindle, ball track, and even a small globe rolling through space. Like Alexander Gleason, whose ‘New Standard Map of the World’ (1892) also included biblical quotations, Ferguson framed his vision of the cosmos with angels stationed at the earth’s corners, invoking Revelation 7:1.

Orlando Ferguson (1846–1911) was born in Illinois but settled in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where he built hotels and bathhouses and promoted his own theories of astronomy and religion. He published The Square World (1897), a monthly magazine of the same name (1895–96), and various pamphlets. His notoriety was such that local newspapers lampooned him, one noting in 1891 that ‘it takes some nerve and backbone to condemn a theory practised by the whole world of every nation.’

The lithograph depicts the world as a flat expanse bounded by scripture and geometry, with seas, continents, and a rim of angels holding back the winds. Its roulette-like form suggests both chance and cosmic order, while the quotations below reinforce Ferguson’s polemical aim: to prove that ‘four hundred passages in the Bible’ condemn the spherical earth. Survival is scarce: institutional holdings are limited to the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library (Leventhal Map Center), and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, with a handful of copies in private hands.

Ex Carta

Orlando Ferguson’s bizarre lithographed Map of the Square and Stationary Earth depicts a roulette-like flat world bounded by angels, scripture, and geometry. Intended to refute the ‘flying globe’ theory, it uses cartographic tradition as a vehicle for biblical polemic and eccentric cosmology.

"In 1893, an American professor named Orlando Ferguson created the Map of the Square and Stationary Earth. Professor Ferguson based his beliefs on a biblical passage which describes four angels standing at the corners of the Earth." (Cynthia Smith, 2025)

An eccentric and extremely rare survival of late nineteenth-century flat-earth cosmology, devised by Orlando Ferguson (1846–1911), a bathhouse operator, self-styled doctor, and tireless pamphleteer.

Ferguson was a committed opponent of the ‘flying globe’ theory, and here he presents what he calls ‘the Bible Map of the World.’ Beneath the image he lists scriptural passages intended to disprove heliocentrism and bolster his claims. For 25 cents the sceptical reader could order his accompanying pamphlet, 

The Latest Discoveries in Astronomy: The Globe Theory of the Earth Refuted

The map, though designed to reject modern astronomy, owes much to contemporary print culture.

Its circular world is arranged on a square base that resembles a roulette table, complete with spindle, ball track, and even a small globe rolling through space. Like Alexander Gleason, whose 

 (1892) also included biblical quotations, Ferguson framed his vision of the cosmos with angels stationed at the earth’s corners, invoking Revelation 7:1.

The lithograph depicts the world as a flat expanse bounded by scripture and geometry, with seas, continents, and a rim of angels holding back the winds. Its roulette-like form suggests both chance and cosmic order, while the quotations below reinforce Ferguson’s polemical aim: to prove that ‘four hundred passages in the Bible’ condemn the spherical earth. Survival is scarce: institutional holdings are limited to the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library (Leventhal Map Center), and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, with a handful of copies in private hands.