The Greeks laid the scientific foundation of Western cartography while investigating the nature of the Earth and the universe. The Romans mostly mapped properties, town plans, and roads. At the same time, the Chinese incorporated art and verbal narrative into their maps, yet they also were concerned with military planning and state security. Japan and Korean tended to rely on China for their world maps, adding themselves to the fringes.
Religious cartography held sway in the Middle Ages, although the Arabs maintained classical intellectual traditions and developed their own Islamic map making traditions as well.
The inventions of the printing press and the rediscovery of Ptolemy's Guide to Geography Sparked a revival in scientific cartography in Western Europe, accelerated by voyages by the Spanish and Portuguese to Africa, the Americas, and the Spice Islands. The French became the first to conduct an official national land survey, producing 182 map sheets by 1787. The British adapted French techniques to produce the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in the early 19th century.
Ortelius & Mercator, Pioneering Mapmakers
As a young man, Flemish scholar and geographer Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) was known for skillfully illuminating manuscripts and for his collection of books and coins. Once established as a cartographer, he revolutionized the Renaissance world with the publication in 1570 of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, or Theater of the world. It is known as the first modern atlas.
The Theatrum proved a huge success and helped transfer the center of the European map trade from Rome and Venice to Antwerp, his home. Some 7,300 copies were printed in 31 editions and seven languages and sold at a cost equivalent to about $1,630 today, making Ortelius very wealthy.
The Theatrum included a one-page reduction of the world projection drawn by Ortelius's friend and fellow Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594). First published in 1569, Mercator's projection was designed to aid navigation. With all lines of latitude and longitude depicted as straight lines, mariners could more easily plot a course over a long distance.
Despite its original nautical purpose, the Mercator projection, with modifications, became a standard two-dimensional representation of the world until well into the 20th century. Generations of school children have studied Mercator's projection, which led them to believe that Greenland and Africa were roughly the same size-although Africa is in fact some 14 times larger.
Mercator's Groundbreaking Map of 1585 used techniques that distorted the size and shape of landmasses, but created a set of lines and angles that allowed sailing ships to navigate the world's oceans. His maps and globes were works of art as well, with elegant calligraphy and ornaments.
Atlas: Named after Atlas, a figure in ancient Greek Mythology, believed to hold Earth on his shoulders. A collection of maps or charts, usually bound together, and often containing pictures, tabular data, facts about areas, and indexes of place-names keyed to coordinates of latitude and longitude or to a locational grid with numbers and letters along the sides of maps.
Do you know that America was first named on Waldseemuller's 1507 world map?!
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