Gerardus mercator. Gerardus Mercator revolutionized mapmaking. He was almost executed for it. 2023-01-07

Gerardus mercator Rating: 5,8/10 1017 reviews

Gerardus Mercator was a Flemish cartographer and geographer who is best known for his work in creating the Mercator projection, a map projection that is widely used today in navigation and geography.

Mercator was born in 1512 in the small town of Rupelmonde in the County of Flanders, which was then a part of the Habsburg Netherlands. From a young age, he showed an aptitude for mathematics and science, and he received a thorough education in these subjects.

In 1530, Mercator enrolled at the University of Louvain, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, and geography. He quickly gained a reputation as an excellent student and was appointed to the position of professor of mathematics in 1539.

In 1540, Mercator began work on his most famous project: the creation of a new map projection that would be more accurate and useful for navigation. At the time, most maps were based on the Ptolemaic projection, which was a flat map that distorted the shapes of land masses as they got farther from the equator. Mercator's projection, on the other hand, was a cylindrical projection that preserved the shapes of land masses but distorted their sizes. This made it much more useful for navigation, as it allowed sailors to plot a straight course on a map and follow it on their journeys.

Mercator's projection quickly gained popularity and was adopted by navigators and cartographers around the world. Today, it is still widely used in navigation and geography, although it has been modified and improved upon over the years.

In addition to his work on the Mercator projection, Mercator also made significant contributions to the field of geography. He published a number of maps and atlases, including the first world atlas to be printed on a flat projection. He also wrote a number of treatises on geography, cartography, and mathematics, and he was considered one of the leading experts in these fields during his lifetime.

Overall, Gerardus Mercator was a pioneering figure in the field of cartography and geography, and his contributions have had a lasting impact on the way we understand and study the world around us.

GERARDUS MERCATOR, Hopper Dredger

gerardus mercator

Geological Survey Professional Paper 1395, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D. First, Leuven was besieged by the troops of the Duke of Cleves, a Lutheran sympathiser who, with French support, was set on exploiting unrest in the Low Countries to his own ends. Mercator also added a feature of special value to seamen: from the numerous compass or wind roses he drew rhumb lines rather than great circles. Consider a point on the globe of radius R with longitude λ and latitude φ. Mercator never explained the method of construction or how he arrived at it.

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Mercator projection

gerardus mercator

Mercator was born to a shoemaker on March 5, 1512 in Rupelmonde, Flanders the Belgian town is about 15 miles from Antwerp. Of this grandiose plan all that was completed were the first and last objectives. This spherical approximation of Earth can be modelled by a smaller sphere of radius R, called the globe in this section. His family did produce another edition in 1602 but only the text was reset, there were no new maps. This is a facsimile of the handwritten copy of the original printed auction catalogue published by Thomas Basson, Leiden, 1604.


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Gerardus Mercator summary

gerardus mercator

If α is neither 0 nor π then the φ; and φ+ δφ is asec α δφ. The terrestrial globe is significant in conjecturing that North America is separated from Asia, unlike the globe of Monachus. Mercator grew up in the Duchy of Julich and was educated Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands where he received training in the Christian doctrine as well as Latin and other dialects. For sixty years they were considered the finest in the world, and were sold in such numbers that there are many surviving examples. For the most invincible Roman Emperor Charles V.

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The Birth of Gerardus Mercator

gerardus mercator

It's unclear if Mercator was actually a Protestant sympathizer or just a nomadic mapmaker, but he eventually was released from prison and, with the help of his sons and correspondents abroad, he returned to making maps. Gerardus Mercator of Rupelmonde at the age of 62—Frans Hogen-burg made this portrait out of affection for him. They were mostly elliptical and struggled to capture the curvature of the Earth for sailors who were plotting a course. The three sections, each with a title page, dedication and supporting text, were sold together and separately. Wall map 92cm ×122cm 36in ×48in on 8 sheets.

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Gerardus Mercator revolutionized mapmaking. He was almost executed for it.

gerardus mercator

This implies that the vertical scale factor, h, equals the horizontal scale factor, k. For the above model 1cm corresponds to 1,500km at a latitude of 60°. Dedicated to Antoine Perrenot. Some numerical values are listed below. He took a new wife, Gertrude Vierlings, the wealthy widow of a former mayor of Duisburg and at the same time he arranged the marriage of Rumold to her daughter.

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Gerard Mercator

gerardus mercator

The image was produced at the request of Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish merchant, scholar, and cartographer who compiled what is considered to be the first modern atlas. There are many variations of the Mercator projection that try to twist the formula, with varying success. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. More often than not the maps show only a graticule of selected meridians and parallels. Due to these pressures, publishers gradually reduced their use of the projection over the course of the 20th century. I liked not only the description of the Earth but the structure of the whole machinery of the world. Even more extreme truncations have been used: a Much Web-based mapping uses a zoomable version of the Mercator projection with an aspect ratio of one.

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Gerardus Mercator

gerardus mercator

Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015 , pp. In Watelet, Marcel ed. One reason may have been that it was incomplete: Spain was omitted and there were no detailed maps outside Europe. Strokes in the early 1590s partly paralysed Mercator and left him almost blind. Old maps had problems, however. Later he would say, "Since my youth, geography has been for me the primary subject of study.

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Gerardus Mercator

gerardus mercator

He started making maps when the world was opening up to the Europeans voyagers and travelers rapidly. And the name he chose for his massive collection of maps — "Atlas" — is widely used. PDF Nicholas Crane, Mercator. In 1552 Mercator moved to Duisburg in the Duchy of Cleves in Germany, where he enjoyed the favour of the duke. Despite criticisms, Mercator's legacy persists In recent years, the Mercator projection has Those criticisms aren't wrong, but they ignore that the original point of Mercator's projections were as a navigational tool for sailors.

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