Gerhard Kremer (1512-94) was called Gerardus Mercator, meaning merchants, because he made maps for merchants travelling from country to country. In 1569 he made a world map using a projection that has come to be known as Mercator's projection. It is not possible to draw the curved surface of the globe accurately on a flat sheet of paper. He showed how to convert the rounded shape of the world into a cylindrical shape, which could be unrolled to make a flat map. However, this can distort the size of countries in the far north and south. But by dividing and Earth into 'orange peel' segments it gave a truer image of the size of the countries.
Fact file
A map must be as easy to read as possible, which means that symbols and colours can often give more information than words. A key explains what the symbols and colours mean.
resources: Tell me why (Chancellor Press)
image 1: https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/images/gerardus-mercator-2.jpg
image 2: https://www.mapsofindia.com/worldmap/map-of-world.jpg
