STAMP STORY

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31119, 23 July 1966, Page 5

STAMP STORY

Mercator The Geographer

(Specially written for "The Press" by KENNETH ANTHONY) (THE WORDS “Mercator’s r Projection” often appear in the margin when a map of the world is reproduced on a small scale. Few of us stop to ponder who Mercator was and why this style of mapmaking should be named after him. A Belgian stamp helps to illustrate the answer. Gerhardus Mercator, a 16thcentury mathematician and geographer, was born in Flanders and educated at Louvain, so it was not unreasonable for Belgium to mark the 450th anniversary of his birth with a special stamp showing his portrait Moreover it was at Louvain that Mercator published his first map, now unfortunately

lost. It showed the Holy Land. Then followed a map of Flanders, followed by a world map, showing the northern and southern hemispheres. Later, Mercator secured a university appointment in Germany. Here in 1569 he first developed his famous projection, indicating degrees of longitude and latitude by straight lines crossing at right angles. Such a method, of course, involves considerable distortion at high latitudes. Many of us can remember maps on which Canada looks twice the size of China! Nevertheless his system is still of great value today. Being based on straight lines it means that compass courses can be plotted more easily