Recently, I was searching for information about Goode's Polar Equal-Area Projection, or perhaps another similar projection, and I came across a familiar image. It was described as a very early advanced interrupted map. I think it was credited to a cartographer named Farr.
I had remembered the image, which was a black-and-white relief map of the world without any text, as the frontispiece to some atlases.
I passed it by, but then I decided I wanted to look it up again, and I couldn't find it.
But I found this page with a map on the same projection, but of a different kind:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Land_Hemisphere_Azimuthal_Equidistant_Projection_Centered_at_48%C2%B0N.,_2%C2%B0W_-_DPLA_-_f5b4453072e2427916309ef3a933d31f.jpg
I have spent some time searching for it, in all the wrong places. Perhaps someone here will remember it right away.
EDIT: I've found another different version of the same projection, this one an outline map. It appeared in the July-September 1949 issue of The Geographical Journal, and got on Alamy. I should be able to find out the name of the author of the article it came from, and then be able to name the projection - which I've now learned is equal-area. (But the original map had the Azimuthal Equidistant in the center, so apparently these are two similar, but not identical, projections.)
The paper is "A New Net for a World Map" by C. B. Fawcett.
Looking for a Map
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mapnerd2022
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Re: Looking for a Map
Yes, C.B. Fawcett did present that projection. I think John Snyder even mentions it in his "Flattening the Earth".
Re: Looking for a Map
I've found Fawcett's paper online now. And it pointed me to where I need to look for the original idea of a projection on this aspect.
It turns out the inspiration for his first map came from a book published in 1902!
Specifically, "Britain and the British Seas", by H. J. Mackinder, he of the "heartland thesis", a volume in a series he edited entitled "The Regions of the World".
So it's entirely possible the black-and-white relief diagram I saw and remember is not on Fawcett's projection - or the other similar one using the Azimuthal Equidistant in the center instead of Lambert's Azimuthal Equal-Area on a 1947 CIA map - but is based directly on Mackinder's sketch, and is not necessarily on a mathematically-defined projection.
In that case, it could easily have been the frontispiece for a world history instead of a book on geography or an atlas. And instead of looking in the 1950s, I have the earlier part of the twentieth century to cover.
It turns out the inspiration for his first map came from a book published in 1902!
Specifically, "Britain and the British Seas", by H. J. Mackinder, he of the "heartland thesis", a volume in a series he edited entitled "The Regions of the World".
So it's entirely possible the black-and-white relief diagram I saw and remember is not on Fawcett's projection - or the other similar one using the Azimuthal Equidistant in the center instead of Lambert's Azimuthal Equal-Area on a 1947 CIA map - but is based directly on Mackinder's sketch, and is not necessarily on a mathematically-defined projection.
In that case, it could easily have been the frontispiece for a world history instead of a book on geography or an atlas. And instead of looking in the 1950s, I have the earlier part of the twentieth century to cover.
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mapnerd2022
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- Joined: Tue Dec 28, 2021 9:33 pm
Re: Looking for a Map
Yes, and I do like this projection. I think it's one of many ingenious solutions to reducing the distortion. It's also a beautiful map IMO.
Re: Looking for a Map
I found the map I was looking for.
In an atlas from 1896. Alex Everett Frye is the individual responsible, and this map appeared in several books from Ginn and Company. I found it in his Home and School Atlas; he made more extensive use of it in his Elements of Geography.
In an atlas from 1896. Alex Everett Frye is the individual responsible, and this map appeared in several books from Ginn and Company. I found it in his Home and School Atlas; he made more extensive use of it in his Elements of Geography.
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mapnerd2022
- Posts: 168
- Joined: Tue Dec 28, 2021 9:33 pm
Re: Looking for a Map
Yes, Frye is also associated with a design along these lines.
Re: Looking for a Map
I have had very good luck recently in finding things that I wanted to include on my pages about map projections, but was not previously able to.
EDIT: Just now, I've edited three pages on my site, after finding the April, 1929 issue of the Monthly Weather Review on the Internet Archive.
My page on the Gnomonic projection was updated with a better image of the gnomonic projection on a regular dodecahedron, one which showed a map, not just the graticule.
My page on Werner's projection was updated with a larger and clearer image of Goode's Polar Equal-Area Projection.
And my page on conformal projections based on the Dixon Elliptic Functions was updated with an image on Cahill's original paper about the conformal butterfly projection calculated by Oscar S. Adams.
EDIT: Just now, I've edited three pages on my site, after finding the April, 1929 issue of the Monthly Weather Review on the Internet Archive.
My page on the Gnomonic projection was updated with a better image of the gnomonic projection on a regular dodecahedron, one which showed a map, not just the graticule.
My page on Werner's projection was updated with a larger and clearer image of Goode's Polar Equal-Area Projection.
And my page on conformal projections based on the Dixon Elliptic Functions was updated with an image on Cahill's original paper about the conformal butterfly projection calculated by Oscar S. Adams.