4 ms·
Great project! I'd just like to mention an obsolete advantage of the Mercator projection, which I assume played a large role in its spread. Back before radio,
by emiliobumachar 6y ago
Great project!
I'd just like to mention an obsolete advantage of the Mercator projection, which I assume played a large role in its spread.
Back before radio, GPS, and accurate clocks, navigation in cloudy days was really, really hard.
Mercator allowed you to draw a line in your map between origin and destination, and its angle with the North in the map would match the physical angle you'd need to keep, with a compass, to go from origin to destination.
It would not give the straightest possible path, but away from the poles it was close enough.
- Finnucane 6y agoYes, Mercator created his map to solve a real problem for the ships' navigators of his day. And it did, it was a big improvement over what they had before that. Like many innovations, it became widely adopted for uses beyond its original scope, which became somewhat forgotten.
- isolli 6y agoDid they have accurate true north declination values at the time? Or were maps oriented (locally) according to magnetic north?