World Map Distortion for Last 500 Years

I remember when this was first published. Some 30 odd years ago.

Serious geographers in the west use it. The rest of us seem to prefer Mercator's projection. Can't think why!

We've got a Peters Projection atlas in the house, which makes for a strange read, as all the pages use the same scale. Western Europe is almost on a double page and then you've got pages of Kazakhstan.

Mercator Projected. A half decent album by East of Eden in 1969. The first track was entitled Northern Hemisphere.
On the album cover, the map is projected on to a naked female, which works for me.

Red_in_SE8 said:

Here is a photo from space of Earth. South America looks more like the one in the Mercator projection rather than the supposedly more accurate Peters projection. I am confused!

https://goo.gl/images/DX7Txi

The google image is three dimensional - southern South America is curving away from the viewer quite substantially. Pull it back out so it is in the same plane as say Mexico and it would look very much like the Peter's projection.

Red_in_SE8 said:

Here is a photo from space of Earth. South America looks more like the one in the Mercator projection rather than the supposedly more accurate Peters projection. I am confused!

https://goo.gl/images/DX7Txi

The problem is going from a round surface to the flat surface. The Mercator looks a lot more like the Earth does from space but land mass areas become distorted by the transition from round to flat.

There are dozens of projections and it is lazy to consider one as more accurate than other because strictly speaking all of the accepted projections are accurate but in a different way. The Mercator is more useful than the Peters for navigation, for example. Peters is the gateway map to understanding why projections differ but is by no means the best projection we have. Classrooms ought to have a globe, not a flat map. Mercator is a decent map for representing where countries are in relation to each other and smaller countries are less likely to be squished together. Perhaps teachers should be encouraged to teach students about projections and show them side by side and discuss the pros and cons of each one, or even extrapolate it into a discussion on whether you can believe everything you see, or whether two different things can both be accurate. There is a lot of opportunity for lateral thinking or critical thought and it would be a shame if schools switched from just using one map to another without a discussion on why.

The worlds maps looked and were better when the best part of them were coloured that nice pinkish red.
I still use a pre 1920 atlas at work, it has all the important bits including the steamer routes.

The episode of the West Wing where this was brought to CJ's attention was also my introduction to the Peters map. My reaction was very similar to hers!

sam3110 said:

Love stuff like this, the world as we know it is skewed so heavily to the more influential, more developed western/"first" world as we know it.

And then to think that the entire population of some of these vast countries would fit into London, or Tokyo, or Mexico City, and you start to realise just how fucking mental we as a species are

It's all about climate - how much of the world's wealth is above and below the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn?

They're all wrong.

http://www.ancientdestructions.com/oronteus-finaeus-map-antarctica-fineus/

My mistake - Oronteus Finaeus & Piri Reis maps were polar ice cap free maps of Antarctica

Exiled_Addick said:

They're all wrong.

Had a look at their site expecting it to be spoof and parody... but... it actually seems genuine!