Long thought to be lost, the Waldseemüller maps were rediscovered in 1901 by a Jesuit historian, Father Josef Fischer, in the library of Prince Johannes von Waldburg zu Wolfegg-Waldsee at the Castle of Wolfegg, in Württemberg, Germany. They were in mint condition, carefully bound together inside a folio.  Fischer found funding to reproduce the maps by photo lithography, with additional notes, in 1903[1]. These are the reproductions displayed here. In 2003 the maps moved to The Thomas Jefferson Library in  Washington DC in the United States when the Library of Congress acquired the original 1507 map, as well as the 1516 "Carta Marina". The map on the left: "Cosmographia Universalis" 1507The first use of the name America appears on the world map "Cosmographia Universalis" published in Strasbourg, France, in 1507 by Waldseemüller. He was a humanist, philosopher and cartographer who assembled information for the map from the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Americo Vespucci and early Portuguese navigators. It was printed from wood-cut blocks prepared by Strasbourg engraver and printer Johannes Grüninger.  Not only was it the first map to use the name America (based on Waldseemüller's recognition that Amerigo Vespucci had identified the newly found lands as a new part of the world), it was also the first printed map showing the Earth as a globe, the first to indicate two separate land masses for what were to become known as North and South America and also the first map to indicate the ocean later to be known as the Pacific.  The word "America" engraved in capitals can be seen across the land mass on the left of the map on what was to become known as South America.  The panel on the right: "Carta Marina" 1516With the rapid expansion of European sea trade and shipping at the turn of the 16^th century, information from navigators and geographers was flooding in to Europe. Waldseemüller's second world map, the "Carta Marina" published in 1516, shows considerable changes over the 1507 map. Seas and coastlines are reflected more accurately, but the Americas had still to be discovered from the Pacific so they are shown as linked to Asia. Despite its inaccuracies the Carta Marina is believed to be the first printed world nautical map. Controversy over Waldseemüller's use of the name America in the first map of 1507 led to the name being dropped in the 1516 version.