West Wing: The Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality. Background from Wikipedia: In 1967 Arno Peters, a German filmmaker and historian, devised a map projection identical to Galls orthographic projection and presented it in 1973 as a new invention. He promoted it as a superior alternative to the Mercator projection, which was suited to navigation but also used commonly in world maps. The Mercator projection increasingly inflates the sizes of regions according to their distance from the equator. This inflation results, for example, in a representation of Greenland that is larger than Africa, whereas in reality Africa is 14 times as large. Since much of the technologically underdeveloped world lies near the equator, these countries appear smaller on a Mercator and therefore, according to Peters, seem less significant. On Peterss projection, by contrast, areas of equal size on the globe are also equally sized on the map. By using his new projection, poorer, less powerful nations could be restored to their rightful proportions. This reasoning has been picked up by many educational and religious bodies, leading to adoption of the Gall–Peters projection among some socially concerned groups, including Oxfam,[6] National Council of Churches,[7] New Internationalist magazine,[8] and the Mennonite Central Committee.[9] youtube/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 21:43:36 +0000