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The Gall–Peters projection of the world map. The Gall–Peters projection is a rectangular, equal-area map projection. Like all equal-area projections, it distorts most shapes. It is a cylindrical equal-area projection with latitudes 45° north and south as the regions on the map that have no distortion.
Gall–Peters = Gall orthographic = Peters: Cylindrical ... Many National Geographic Society maps of single continents use this projection. 1948 Atlantis = Transverse ...
Therefore, more generally, a map projection is any method of flattening a continuous curved surface onto a plane. [citation needed] The most well-known map projection is the Mercator projection. [7]: 45 This map projection has the property of being conformal. However, it has been criticized throughout the 20th century for enlarging regions ...
Map projection has been used to create cartographic propaganda by making small areas bigger and large areas bigger still. [18] Arno Peters' attack on the Mercator Projection in 1972 is an example of the subjectivity of map projection; Peters argued that it is an ethnocentric projection. [19]
The map engendered controversy. The map projection Peters claimed to have developed had been presented more than a century earlier by the Reverend James Gall, and, despite Peters's claims, the projection was not the first or only equal-area projection. Many other of his claims were disputed or debunked.
Colton's Map of the World on Mercator's Projection (1858. In 1569, Gerardus Mercator introduced a map projection of the Earth which is now known as the Mercator projection, with the purpose of preserving compass bearings at the cost of distorting other aspects of size and shape. This projection maintained equally spaced longitudinal lines but ...
Yet his projection remains the authority all the same. Today, when children learn geography in school, they might not see Mercator’s poorly proportioned countries and continents on a wall-mounted map. But they will likely see it through the glare of a screen: even Google Maps uses the Mercator projection.
Maps treating values whose gradients are important, such as a weather map with atmospheric pressure, are also projected by conformal projections. Small scale maps have large scale variations in a conformal projection, so recent world maps use other projections. Historically, many world maps are drawn by conformal projections, such as Mercator ...