The Appalling Peter's Projection?

[GWR]

The earth in true proportion for the first time?

Some writing concerning the controversial "Peters projection" for a world map:-

http://www.imaginatorium.org/books/maps.htm

And the 'Peter's People' themselves:-

http://www.petersmap.com/table.html

http://www.petersmap.com/peterms.gif

[ncr]

"Appalling", indeed. I still vividly remember our cartography prof in university (I happen to have studied Geography, and that is a mandatory course in the first semester) cursing the Peters Map. :D And he also explained us what is so bad about it.

This map has proved to be incredibly popular anywhere where political correctness was the order of the day...... and undeservedly so. While it's not a downright fraud, it's an illusion; an often perpetuated legend of "true and fair representation" through revolutionary cartographic means.

The point being, the Peters Projection was developed with the intention to provide a fairer representation of the world (i.e. its continents and countries). Especially as opposed to the time-honoured Mercator Projection, which heavily distorts the regions close to the poles, at the same time dramatically decreasing the size of landmasses near to the equator (where most "Third World Countries" tend to concentrate - bingo!) However, it was originally a navigation chart rather than a "map" and as such very useful for sailors as it is conformal (i.e. angles are preserved), while the size of shapes did not matter that much.

What the Peters Projection did was to sacrifice this conformality and display areas according to their true size (but not shape). In fact, it distorted the shapes in a ridiculous way, by stretching them in North-South direction. Like mentioned in this section (http://www.imaginatorium.org/books/maps.htm#projection) of one of the above links, shapes are only correct at 45 degrees N and S. Now if that is a good idea, and especially if it serves the map's very purpose is up to anyone's judgement.

In my opinion - and that of many others, I am sure - the result is simply ugly and certainly not superior to any other projection in terms of fairness to the Third World etc. etc. What use is it having these wrong shapes, even if they are correct in size? Do they do any favour to the countries involved?

Conclusion - the only true representation of the earth (which, by the way, strictly speaking, has the shape of a potato, not a sphere!) is in the form of a globe, not a two-dimensional map. Alas, a globe has practical limitations as to its size (scale) and cannot be carried everywhere..... So the best world maps (as the distortion effects are rather negligible for subsets of the world's surface) are still those that constitute a compromise between equal-area and true-shape.

More details can be found on Wikipedia: 1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall-Peters_projection) and 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection) (as usual).