Gilles Robert de Vaugondy (1688 - 1766)

Vaugondy inherited the firm of his uncle, Pierre Moullart-Sanson, in 1730. He quickly increased the business when he purchased the stock one of the leading French cartographers, Hubert Jaillot. He astutely combined his own additions to the maps he had purchased, bringing them up to date without the expense of creating new maps and engraving plates. Fittingly as a leading Parisian mapmaker of his day he was made Geographer to the King in 1730.

Vaugondy was also one of the leading exponents of the French School of Theoretical Cartography and like Nicholas Bellin popularised the notion of an imaginary east coast of Australia.