The World In Maps

Think of how hard it is to peel and orange and press the resulting pieces of peek down flat on table. That analogy represents the challenges faced by the mapmaker, who attempts to turn the spiracle planet earth into a flat visual representation. To tackle the challenge getting the surface of a sphere to lie flat cartographers use shapes that lend themselves to flattening such as planes, cones & cylinder, known as developable surfaces.

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By applying mathematical calculations to the developable surfaces, they can transform Earth’s feature into flat forms. Those forms are called projections, and they represent the challenge of mapmaking through the centuries.

Projection inevitably result ne distortions. Dost distortions can be controlled to some degree by the choice of map shape which depends on which part of the planet is of most interest in the cartographer.

Only where the surface directly touches the global will the map be completely accurate. Away from these points of contact, Earth’s features become stretched or squeezed in order to become flat.

Changing Fashions In World Maps

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No one world map projection can do it all accurate distance, direction, shape and area. Over the years coma different projections have come to the forefront.

The Winkle triple projection, adopted in 1998 by the National geographic society, is most of the season today for general reference.

The Robinson projection was favoured for classrooms and textbooks from 1988 to 1998.

The Van der Grinten projection was used by the the National geographic society for most of its political maps from 1992 into the 1980s.

The Mercator projection commerce centuries-old and yet still broadly use, also distorts the relative sizes of land masses in high latitudes.