The earth’s graticule and Projections 109
route between Los Angeles and London. On this projection, the great circle route
appears longer than the rhumb line.
The Mercator–Peters Controversy
Cartographers have objected to the use of the Mercator (or any cylindrical) projec-
tion for
world maps for many decades, as described earlier. However,
in the late
fIgURe 6.18.
The Mercator projection was developed by Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for
navigation.
fIgURe 6.19.
Rhumb lines or loxodromes are straight lines on the Mercator projection. The
cardinal
directions, N, S, E, W, are thus shown as straight lines.
110 THe geOgRaPHiC anD
CaRTOgRaPHiC FRaMeWORK
1970s, Arno Peters proposed a “new”
world map, the
so-called Peters projection
(Figure 6.21), saying that it was a far superior projection than Mercator, which he
believed was used because cartographers were biased toward developed countries.
His projection, which is actually the Gall projection developed a century earlier, is an
equal-area cylindrical projection, and, according to Peters, shows shapes better than
Mercator. In fact, his projection has many deficiencies of its own, some of which are
inherent in any cylindrical projection. A number of agencies adopted this projection
based on Peters’s persuasive rhetoric and it is now found in atlases and wall maps.
Because of the distortions inherent in rectangular projections, in 1989 the
GRE
AT
CIRCLE
RHUMB
LIN
E
fIgURe 6.20.
On the Mercator projection a great circle that is the shortest distance between
two points on a sphere looks farther than the rhumb line. These distances can be compared
on a globe.
