Maps

In my previous post on peanut butter, I mentioned that I love old maps, but this isn't quite true.

I love all maps.

Cartography (from the Greek chartis = map and graphein = write) is a wonderful art, a method of viewing the world that combines both skill, passion, attention to detail and dedication. To relay information about reality in a format that is easy to understand, portable and accurate has long been a goal of explorers and civilizations all over the world, and maps are the ideal way of conveying such data.

Map of the world centered on America prepared by the American atlas publisher Joseph Hutchins Colton in 1852

I think the adoption of ships as the main form of transporting huge amounts of goods from the New World back to the central powers in Europe was probably the largest catalyst for cartographers. Maps and charts were vital in order to give the trip the best chance of survival; sure, you might still die on the voyage of scurvy, pirates or unfriendly locals, but at least your chances of getting lost, and therefore journey times, were drastically reduced - and the less time you spent at sea, the faster you could make money from your goods and the less chance you had of dying.

It is thought the very first maps date from 8,000 years ago, and they have grown in complexity and beauty ever since.

If you look at the image of the map from 1852 above, you'll see the legend 'On Mercator's Projection'. This means the map uses Mercator's cylindrical projection system in order to display the Earth in a simple way that is most useful to sailors who need the charts for navigation. A set of complicated equations is needed to alter the position of objects such as continents from a spherical surface onto a uniform cylinder. This leads to some distortion, which becomes more and more exaggerated as you head towards the poles.

Mercator's Projection is the one we are most familiar with; however, distortion has led to the effect that Greenland is the size of Africa, whereas Africa is in fact 14 times the size of Greenland. Alaska appears roughly the same size as Brazil, but the latter is actually 5 times larger than Alaska. However, for something devised in 1569, it's not a bad attempt.

Since then, dozens of people have attempted to combine mathematics and common sense into producing a suitable, accurate map that displays the Earth, which is curved, on a flat surface. A list of them can be found here. My personal favourite has to be the Polar Azimuthal Equidistant Projection, mainly because it is such a great way to view the world: we are all spread out evenly, with no one continent given preference over any other. You may have seen it before, on the emblem of the United Nations:

Maps are not just required on a global scale.

We need them to get around our cities and countries, to find suitable routes to work or the fastest way to get to your holiday destination. Since the advent of aeroplanes, large maps for mass travel and transportation between continents have become less crucial, but cartographers are still able to busy themselves with producing the most accurate and detailed local maps they can.

What started thousands of years ago with carvings on walls and tablets has culminated in projects like Google Earth and Bing Maps, as well as Sat-Nav and GPS, arguably the some of the most useful tools ever created.

But what next? Now that we have satellites and aircraft equipped with cameras that can map the world for us,  where do we go from here?

Easy: Space. There are hundreds of bodies out there that need mapping for us to better understand them, just as creating a map of our world helped us to know it better; and when that is done, you can always fall back on fantasy, simply creating maps and charts of imaginary worlds for the fun of it. I do this quite often - a doodle can turn into an entire planet with continents, countries, cities, rivers, seas and islands, all waiting to be explored and described in my head...