Thursday, June 23, 2011

Goode and Evil Maps

Thanks once again to geographer Matt Rosenberg for a great geography story. This time, Matt describes the background of an atlas that many geographers know and love. Goode's World Atlas, now in its 22 edition, began as an antidote to the all-too-common Mercator projection.

I have always taken the projection for granted in these atlases, being more impressed by the overall quality of the content, the careful selection of map scale, and the variety of thematic maps. I did not know that, in a 1908 speech, Professor Goode told the AAG that the Mercator projection is evil!

See Matt's article for the whole story and see the commentary on projections that I created for our K-12 EarthView blog.
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1 comment:

  1. UnknownJuly 18, 2011 at 4:03 AM

    But it is evil! I spent my childhood wondering why the heck Greenland wasn't a continent and believing that Alaska was almost the same size as the contiguous US.

    Then my parents bought a globe and my geography crisis ended.

    http://googleearthtimemachine.blogspot.com/

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