Feb. 26, 2009
Today's Geography Lesson: Maps
Posted in Narrations
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There was once a man who loved to row up and down the beach in a little rowboat, and he always made it back home in time for dinner. Every time he saw a recognizable spot, he would carve a sort of image into his oar handle, and he would always know where he was. In the olden times, you didn't have maps to look at to guide you. The only available asset was the globe. Many people found it hard to lug around a big, heavy globe (for in those times, you made globes out of a wire frame, smeared with plaster, which was very heavy), and so the first map was invented. If you take an orange, and cut the peel off, leaving it in one piece, it will lie flat. This was the basic idea. But this method leaves large gaps in the map, cutting whole countries in half. This is where Gerhard Kremer invented the map that we see today. Gerhard was an arithmetic teacher, so his job was to know math, and this math helped him to calculate a way to flatten maps completely. Imagine a can, with the label still on, instead of an orange. Take the label off the can, and this was the kind of map that Gerhard Kremer, or "Mercator" as he eventually came to be called, had. |
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