Joseph Needham, a historian of China, speculated that some star charts of the Chinese Song Dynasty may have been based on the … See more

As with all map projections, the shapes or sizes are distortions of the true layout of the Earth's surface. The Mercator projection exaggerates areas far from the equator See more

Cylindrical projections
Although the surface of Earth is best modelled by an oblate ellipsoid of revolution, for small scale maps the ellipsoid is approximated by a sphere of radius a, where a is approximately 6,371 km. This spherical … See more

• Maling, Derek Hylton (1992), Coordinate Systems and Map Projections (second ed.), Pergamon Press, ISBN 0-08-037233-3.
• Monmonier, Mark (2004), Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection See more

The Mercator projection can be visualized as the result of wrapping a cylinder tightly around a sphere, with the two surfaces tangent to (touching) … See more

Practically every marine chart in print is based on the Mercator projection due to its uniquely favorable properties for navigation. It is also commonly used by street map services … See more

• Cartography
• Central cylindrical projection – more distorted; sometimes erroneously described as the method of construction of the Mercator projection See more