United States Government Printing Office, 1989. — 260 р.
The puzzling world of map projections has fascinated humans for at least 2,500 years. Perhaps no single aspect of the cartographic discipline has held the cartographer's interest so consistently throughout history. How does one portray on a nonspherical surface the essentially spherical shape of the planet on which we live? It cannot be done without distortion, but the number of ways in which that distortion can be handled is infinite. Although the subject is inherently mathematical and very complex in some instances, it also is highly visual and readily calls forth human reactions ranging from near disbelief to unquestioned acceptance as truth, from confusion to a clear understanding of information. Map projections have been devised for propaganda purposes, as evidence in court, for use in detailed planning, and to attract attention. Most people are affected more than they realize by map projections. Cognition of the relative areas and shapes on the Earth's surface and knowledge (correct or incorrect) of angles, sizes, distances, and other relationships among places on the globe are determined by the cartographer's choice of map projections. "An Album of Map Projections" should enable readers to sharpen and in some cases to correct their knowledge of the distances, directions, and relative areas of the world. Although there has been no dearth of valuable books describing a wide range of map projections, "An Album of Map Projections" is the first attempt to set forth in a comprehensive manner most of the useful and commonly known map projections. Consistent and concise nonmathematical textural descriptions are accompanied by standardized visual protrayals. Descriptions of graticules, scale, distortion characteristics, and aspects are carefully worded. Supplemental information on usage, origin, and similar projections is also presented. No other collection of world portrayals is comparable, because of the standard-format illustrations and the accompanying distortion diagrams presented in this volume. These illustrations will be useful for classroom teaching, for selecting a projection to fit an output format, and for making visual comparisons between projections. An appendix contains forward formulas for all but a few highly complex projections to transform from latitude and longitude positions on a sphere to rectangular coordinates. Inverse formulas and formulas treating the Earth as an ellipsoid have not been included. Standardized notation is introduced and used throughout. Finally, it must be noted that this volume could not have been realistically produced without the aid of a computer. Although a compendium of this nature has been needed for decades (to avoid some of the confusion resulting from identical projections' being called by different names, if nothing else), the enormity of manually compiling the necessary information prevented its production. The computer's ability to calculate and plot the portrayals made this album possible.
