World Map Non Mercator
The latitudes and.
World map non mercator. The map you re used to seeing pinned on classroom walls and in atlases is known as a mercator projection and was first presented by the flemish geographer gerardus mercator back in 1569. The mercator projection the map most commonly seen hanging in classrooms and in text books was created in 1596 to help sailors navigate the world. The map most commonly used in the world is the mercator map. Maps are hugely important tools in our everyday life whether it s guiding our journeys from point a to b or shaping our big picture perceptions about geopolitics and the environment.
For many people the earth as they know it is heavily informed by the mercator projection a tool. This correction whereby constant bearing sailing courses on the. At present web mercator is the de facto standard for web mapping applications and is used by popular content providers like google maps microsoft bing maps and openstreetmaps which we use among others. This is also the map that formulates our basic ideas of what our planet looks like.
In fact even google maps uses the mercator map. This technique works to more or less fit the countries of the globe on a two dimensional piece of paper and is great for ocean navigation. When you create a map in tableau by default you re creating a map in the web mercator projection. The result is a widespread misconception that greenland is as big as africa siberia and canada are disproportionally massive and that antarctica apparently just goes on forever.
Given how popular the mercator projection is it s wise to question how it makes us view the world. Mercator map enthusiasts defend the ease of navigation of their map. Clever map shows the true size of countries. This is the map that we see in classrooms all over the world.
The familiar map gives the right shapes of land. To be completely honest it is a convenient map. The world map you know is totally wrong. Many have noted for example how the distortion around the poles makes africa look smaller than.
Check out this clever graphic which helps put into perspective the true size of countries. The standard classroom maps we all learned geography from are based on the mercator projection a 16th century rendering that preserved lines used for navigation while hideously distorting the true sizes of continents and oceans further from the equator. The mercator world map of 1569 is titled nova et aucta orbis terrae descriptio ad usum navigantium emendate accommodata renaissance latin for new and more complete representation of the terrestrial globe properly adapted for use in navigation. Maps and others use a variant of the mercator projection for their map images called web mercator or google web mercator.