Abstract
For more than 2000 years mapmakers have been inventing ways to display the entire Earth on a flat surface—papyrus, vellum, metal, paper, or whatever—and now on a TV or computer monitor. The process requires a systematic conversion called a map projection . There is no single solution, and hundreds have been devised. The Earth is round like a ball, and no matter how one flattens the rounded surface the reality of the spherical surface will be variously deformed to a noticeable degree.
Permission granted by Eric Anderson, Executive Director for CaGIS, 2011–2016
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This chapter is slightly modified version of the Special Publication No. 2 of the American Cartographic Association, a member organization of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, Suite 100, 5410 Grosvenor Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. The Special Publication No. 2, ISBN 0-9613459-2-6, has been published in 1988 by the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping.
In that time, the Committee on Map Projections consisted of the following distinguished members: James R. Carter, Marshall B. Faintich, Patricia Caldwell Lindgren, Barbara B. Petchenik, Arthur H. Robinson and John P. Snyder, Chairman. Text and design was by Arthur H. Robinson, computer plotting of projections, coastlines, and cartoons by John P. Snyder and Waldo R. Tobler, and preparation of graphics by the University of Wisconsin Cartographic Laboratory.
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Robinson, A.H., The Committee on Map Projections (2017). Choosing a World Map. In: Lapaine, M., Usery, E. (eds) Choosing a Map Projection. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51835-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51835-0_2
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