About Babson World Globe
Babson College has an Earth large enough to need industrial engineering. The Babson World Globe measures 28 feet in diameter, weighs about 25 tons, and was designed to rotate on its axis. It is less like classroom equipment and more like someone scaled up a desk globe until it became infrastructure.
College founder Roger Babson and his grandson Roger Webber developed the idea in 1947. Babson personally provided $200,000 for the project, which was constructed in the early 1950s and dedicated in 1955. It originally formed part of a larger Map and Globe Museum intended to make geography, economics, transportation, and world affairs physically vivid.
Babson’s imagination initially went even farther. College history notes that he envisioned the globe rotating on an oak tree trunk, an idea that was not used. The actual structure was engineered to turn mechanically. After decades of weather and wear, the globe underwent major restorations, including work tied to Babson College’s centennial.
The refurbished globe was moved to Kerry Murphy Healey Park on campus in 2019. It remains outdoors and highly visible, though visitors should respect current campus parking and access rules. A twenty-five-ton rotating planet is already enough of an attraction, but knowing that the first plan involved balancing it on a tree makes the whole thing feel properly Babsonian.