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The Mercator projection (/ mərˈkeɪtər /) is a conformal cylindrical map projection first presented by Flemish geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation due to its property of representing rhumb lines as straight lines.
A lot of people have problems with the Mercator map of the world. Fortunately, The True Size is set up to help cartography fans see how much it distorts land mass by allowing users to move outlines of nations across the 2-D images. It is oddly addictive.
The Mercator projection is a map projection introduced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. The Mercator projection is a useful navigation tool, as a straight line on a Mercator map indicates a straight course, but it is not a practical world map, because of distortion of scale near the poles.
In the 16th century, Mercator developed a world map mainly used for ocean navigation, and this projection is still used to this day for a number of purposes. The land masses, however, are distorted in shape and size.
The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection. It is conceptually based on projecting the Earth’s surface onto a cylinder. This cylinder is then unwrapped into a flat plane. Mercator achieved his projection by spacing the latitude lines farther apart as they move away from the equator.
Like all the map projections, Mercator projection distorts the Earth surface’s true layout, size, and shape. Because the projection’s linear scale increases with latitude, the geographical areas far from the equator always appear distorted.
When positions on the graticule are transformed to positions on a projected grid, four types of distortion can occur: distortion of sizes, angles, distances, and directions. Map projections that avoid one or more of these types of distortion are said to preserve certain properties of the globe.