Map Projections
Projection↕ | Type↕ | Year Created↕ | Preserves↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Mercator | Cylindrical (conformal) | 1569 | Angles and shapes (conformal) | The map everyone grew up with, makes Greenland look the size of Africa (it's 14x smaller), perfect for navigation because straight lines = constant compass bearing, the most criticized map in history |
Robinson | Pseudocylindrical (compromise) | 1963 | Nothing perfectly — compromises everything | National Geographic's choice for 10 years, looks 'right' to most people even though nothing is accurate, the diplomat of projections — everyone's slightly unhappy but nobody's furious |
Winkel Tripel | Azimuthal (modified, compromise) | 1921 | Balanced area, distance, and direction | National Geographic's current standard (since 1998), minimizes total distortion better than almost anything, name means 'triple' in German for its three-way compromise, the gold standard of wall maps |
Peters (Gall-Peters) | Cylindrical (equal-area) | 1855 / 1967 | Area (equal-area) | The political map — shows Africa and South America at their true massive size, West Wing episode made it famous, looks 'stretched' to Western eyes used to Mercator, sparked the biggest map controversy ever |
Mollweide | Pseudocylindrical (equal-area) | 1805 | Area (equal-area) | The elliptical world map, great for showing global distributions and climate data, edges get squished but areas are honest, the scientist's choice for thematic maps, elegantly curved |
Goode Homolosine | Pseudocylindrical (interrupted, equal-area) | 1923 | Area (by interrupting oceans) | The 'orange peel' map — slices the oceans to keep land accurate, looks like someone peeled the globe, brilliant for land-based data but sailors hate it, the most creative solution to an impossible problem |
Azimuthal Equidistant | Azimuthal | ~1000 AD (al-Biruni) | Distances from center point | The UN flag uses it (centered on North Pole), flat Earth believers accidentally use a legitimate projection, shows true distances from one point to everywhere, used for radio and seismic analysis |
Stereographic | Azimuthal (conformal) | ~150 AD (Ptolemy) | Angles and shapes locally (conformal) | The oldest projection still in regular use, maps circles on the globe to circles on the map, weather maps and polar regions love it, the astronomer's and navigator's projection |
Lambert Conformal Conic | Conic (conformal) | 1772 | Angles and shapes (conformal) | Aviation charts worldwide use it, US State Plane Coordinate System is built on it, great for mid-latitude countries that stretch east-west, the pilot's map projection, engineering standard |
Albers Equal-Area Conic | Conic (equal-area) | 1805 | Area (equal-area) | USGS standard for maps of the contiguous United States, preserves area perfectly for mid-latitude regions, the definitive way to map the USA, census and thematic mapping workhorse |
Transverse Mercator | Cylindrical (conformal, transverse) | 1772 (Lambert) / 1822 (Gauss) | Angles along central meridian | UTM grid system that every GPS on Earth uses, Google Maps' base projection, rotated Mercator that's accurate in narrow north-south strips, the silent king of modern navigation |
Dymaxion (Fuller) | Polyhedral (icosahedron) | 1943 | Relative area and shape (minimal distortion) | Buckminster Fuller's genius unfolded icosahedron, no 'right way up' — challenges north-is-up bias, shows continents as nearly contiguous landmass, the most intellectually provocative map ever made |
Equirectangular (Plate Carrée) | Cylindrical (equidistant) | ~100 AD (Marinus of Tyre) | Latitude-longitude grid spacing | The simplest possible projection — just plot lat/lon as x/y, default texture map for 3D globes and satellite imagery, every space photo of Earth uses it, mathematically trivial but visually familiar |
Sinusoidal | Pseudocylindrical (equal-area) | 1606 (Mercator's son?) | Area and distances along central meridian and equator | Equal-area with pointed edges, great for single-continent maps, Africa and South America look correct, NASA uses it for planetary mapping, the mathematically elegant equal-area option |
AuthaGraph | Polyhedral (tetrahedron-based) | 1999 | Area and shape (nearly uniform distortion) | Won Japan's Good Design Grand Award, tessellates infinitely without edge distortion, arguably the most accurate flat world map ever created, quietly revolutionary, the future of cartography |
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This dataset contains 15 entries, each with multiple sortable, filterable columns. The full table is visible on this page and can be downloaded as a CSV, JSON, or Excel file.
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