From the "I Bet You've Never Seen One of These" department: Bett's New Portable Terrestrial Globe ca 1850. London. Also known as an umbrella globe.

"The idea of an inexpensive, portable globe for teaching had been suggested in the late 18th century. Richard and Maria Edgeworth, a father-daughter pair of educationalists, asked in their 1798 publication Practical Education: "Might not a cheap, portable, and convenient globe be made of oiled silk, to be inflated by a common pair of bellows?" It was another forty years, however, until such a globe was first produced. Their request was answered in around 1830 with the invention of the balloon globe, an object made of fabric gores stitched together, which was inflated with an air pump. However, in 1850, John Betts designed an attractive alternative that did not require being inflated with a pump. Betts' "New Portable Globe", used an umbrella mechanism to support the gores in a spherical shape." (courtesy Whipple)

 Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association has a lengthy discussion of The Betts Globe below.

Were you ever troubled with figuring out distances when looking at a road map? If so, then you needed an opisometer.

A kid came in the shop yesterday and said he had a pocket watch for sale. Said it was his grandfathers and that it didnt look right to him. The kid probably has only seen the time presented digitally so I had to cut him some slack. Anyway, it's not a watch. It is an "opisometer" which is a device for measuring the distance between two points on a flat map. It has a little wheel on the bottom that you roll between the two points you are interested in. While the little wheel turns the sweep hand goes around the face of the instrument. It converts how far you rolled on the map into kilometers. Pretty cool. This one is WW II vintage and German made. Very high quality. Includes a handy compass. I was excited about learning a new word yesterday....opisometer.

 Available for purchase here