It may come as a surprise to learn that every world map that you have ever seen will not have represented countries in their correct, proportional size to one another. Indeed, only a globe has the ability to precisely illustrate the earth's characteristics.

The transference of the features of the earth's surface onto a flat surface has been subject to interpretation and choice since the earliest days of world mapping, here you can read a little bit of the history surrounding map projections.

Mercator projection of the world For much of the twentieth century, the world was portrayed by the Mercator projection - originally produced in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator for navigational purposes.

In order to represent the world flat the Mercator projection treated the world as a cylinder, which essentially kept the lines of latitude parallel to one another instead of converging at the poles. In an attempt to regain accuracy of shape (a very important quality for a map for navigational purposes), the lines of latitude, which are equal distance apart on a globe were stretched as their distance away from the equator was increased.

This method might have regained accuracy in shape but the stretching hugely distorted the area of countries, especially those closest to the poles.

The Soviet Union became 223% bigger than it really is, Greenland 554%, Canada 258% and the United States 68%.
Cylindrical projection of the world

 The cylindrical equal area projection sacrifices the accurate shapes of Mercator's projection to represent countries in their correct proportional size.

This is done by narrowing the lines of latitude as they approach the poles in order to compensate for the missing convergence of the lines of longitude.

The map is a very different vision of our planet, one that gives emphasis to different areas of the world. Although as extreme in it's portrayal of the world as Mercator's projection it highlighted the deficiencies of the Mercator projection as a geographical teaching aid.

The cylindrical equal area projection was first brought to the public's attention in the 1970's by the German historian, Arno Peters. He marketed his version of Gall's orthographic projection, first published in 1855 to great success.

The 'Peters' projection has had over sixteen million copies distributed in six different languages.

The cartographic industry was of course well aware of both of these projections failings as geographical maps and in 1989 the American Cartographic Association issued a resolution urging publishers and agencies 'to cease using rectangular (cylindrical) world maps for general purposes or artistic displays'.

In doing so, the two most high profile map projections of the twentieth century began to make way for a series of Pseudocylindrical projections (commonly having parallel lines of latitude and curved meridians) that were first experimented within the 1800's.

Robinson projection of the world

 In 1963 the map publishers, Rand McNally asked Arthur H Robinson to select a world map projection that would fulfill a list of nine requirements that included the area-scale distortion described above.

He could not find a suitable existing projection and so set about designing a new one. Rather than using the traditional method of computing coordinates by mathematical formulas he utilised a more visual trial and error development.

"I started with a kind of artistic approach," Dr. Robinson said in a 1988 interview with The New York Times. "I visualised the best-looking shapes and sizes. I worked with the variables until it got to the point where, if I changed one of them, it didn't get any better."

Only then, he said, did he "figure out the mathematical formula to produce that effect." For his projection, Dr Robinson chose 38 degrees north and 38 degrees south as the standard parallels. This established the two places on the map where both size and shape are the most accurate, in the middle of the temperate zone, where most of the land and people are.

The projection was used immediately within various atlases that Rand McNally produced and as a wall map also. Purchasers however had become so used to the visual of the Mercator projection that sales were not as expected and the sheet map was withdrawn from popular distribution.

It wasn't until 1988 when The National Geographic Society were deciding upon a projection to replace the Van der Grinten projection that they had used since 1922 that the Robinson Projection got it's full and deserved push into the public's eye.

Of some twenty possibilities the Robinson projection was chosen and as a result of the press conference "more than 550 newspapers and magazines with a combined circulation of over 51 million" carried a story about the change.