Every map starts with the same lie: The earth is flat. The globe isn’t a portable, affordable, or even satisfying way to look at the world, so these exaggerations are necessary. However, mapmakers ...
Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. World maps distort size and shape by design. Learn why projections matter and how they shape global understanding. (CREDIT: ...
The most widely used map in the U.S. today is the Mercator projection map. Mercator maps often appear in businesses, in libraries and in classrooms where geography is taught. This popularity is ...
How distorting are map projections? Here’s what four commonly used systems of projection do to a human head. From the 1921 publication Elements in Map Projection comes this striking demonstration of ...
In 1569, Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator synthesized existing ideas in navigation and cartography to create a new type of world map. It has stood the test of time: Billions of people would ...
The African Union has joined a growing campaign to challenge centuries of cartographic distortion that has long diminished Africa’s true scale on world maps. The bloc of 55 nations recently endorsed ...
On a typical world map, Canada is a vast nation. Home to six time zones, its endless plains spread from ocean to ocean, dominating great swathes of the northern half of the globe. But, in reality, ...
The Mercator projection, a centuries-old map style from the age of sail, still prevails in the internet age. Here’s what the African Union wants to use instead ...