About the Founder
Make things
Make things work
Make things work better
Giant Globes Inc. was started by Matt Binns, an Englishman who roamed the planet before making his home in Chicago some 20 years ago.
Who is Matt Binns?We were simply born to shape metal for a living
We have been perfecting methods of bending sheet aluminum for more than two decades, using techniques from the 19th century as well as from modern metallurgy.
To that end we designed unique and innovative processes, jigs, rigs and specialized machinery to help us.
As the world turns...
There was no way to use existing mapping software to create flat continents that would give the correct shape when bent into a smooth compound curve, so we made our own, which took nearly three years and hundreds of revisions. It is a projection based less on mathematics (though it lives as a CAD file) and more on aesthetics and the properties of metal under bending forces.
The Binns Projection
Sorry we can’t show you, it’s a trade secret. Out of the nearly 150 map projections developed over the last two millennia it is the world’s only truly representative land projection, in that it actually does accurately represent the a continent’s size and shape when bent around a globe. That said, our globes are not intended for navigational purposes!