March 5 – Happy Birthday, Gerard Mercator

 Posted on March 5, 2021

This is an update of my post published March 5, 2010:

Born on this date in 1512, in Flanders, Mercator was a geographer and mathematician who worked out a way to draw maps and globes that were much more accurate than previous efforts.

He made most of his money by making fine mathematical instruments, and he worked on his first globe project as an engraver of brass plates. In 1537 he embarked on cartography, or map making.

Before Mercator, globes were made by carefully painting maps onto spheres of wood, or carefully engraving brass spheres. It was very difficult to draw / paint / engrave on the round surfaces.

Mercator created his globes by painting world maps flat on paper with a number of tapering gores. These gores were cut out and applied to the spherical globes.

Mercator is more famous for his flat maps than for his globes. He created many maps that exaggerated the size of landforms at the North and South Poles so that lines of longitude would be straight up and down; proportions and coastlines of small objects and of the populated areas of the world – in other words, everything below 70 degrees latitude – would be much more accurate.

This sort of map, shown above, is very common and is named the Mercator projection.

A lot of people complain about the inaccuracy of Mercator projection maps, but apparently these maps made it a LOT easier for sailors to compute their courses. With a Mercator map, they could draw a straight line from their present location to their destination, then compute the angle of that line compared to the straight longitude lines and directly set their course.

Where in the world is Mercator’s birthplace, Flanders?

This county existed in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, from 862 to 1795. (These dates are often accompanied by the abbreviation A.D. [Anno Domini] or C.E. [Common Era] to distinguish them from earlier dates, which are labeled B.C. or B.C.E., the years before Jesus lived.)

Flanders was part of the “low country,” which easily flooded and was protected by a number of dikes that held back the sea. Today the ancient land of Flanders is mostly in Belgium, but part is in France and part in the Netherlands. The section of Flanders that is now part of Belgium is called the Flemish community; Dutch is the primary language there, whereas French is the primary language of the southern portion of Belgium.

Draw a map…

Create an imaginary land that you can map out in a great deal of detail. Name the features that you include. When you are done, use a ruler to carefully draw a grid of horizontal and vertical lines that are an equal distance away from each other. When you number the lines North and South, East and West (or number the vertical – longitude – lines and label the horizontal – latitude – lines with letters), then you have a way for people to find and talk about the features on your map.

“You can’t find Rainbow Falls? Why, that’s in 6-C.”
“Where is Crystal City?” “It’s in 3-D.”
…and so forth.

Check out 

National Geographic offers a lesson about mapmaking and projections. They suggest carefully peeling an orange – keeping the peel in one piece – and then flattening the peel. There is a video, PDFs, and more!

Here‘s a simple World Map clickable quiz. And here are a variety of World Map clickable quizzes at a variety of levels!

This website offers free, printable maps.

Leventhal Map has a cool embedded globe visual that you can spin with your mouse or touchpad! Also, there are some unusual map projections to click through.

You will notice that there is no perfect way to flatten the map. What do you think about these two less-familiar world maps?

We all use world maps with north on top, south on the bottom. But that is just a historical accident. The map above makes just as much logical sense!

The Peters Projection