THE Mercator projection is a cylindrical cartographic projection made by geographer, cartographer and mathematician Gerhard Mercator (1512-1594). It is currently one of the most used projections around the world.
Mercator was born in the Flanders region (now Belgium) and was considered one of the most renowned cartographers of history, being responsible for the elaboration of the concept of the term "Atlas" as a set of maps. He was considered, by many, as the father of Modern Cartography and most of his works and works were inspired in the ancient writings of Ptolemy, one of the most classic names in geography and graphic representations in Antique.
His famous cartographic projection - first known as Nova et aucta orbis terrae descriptio ad usum navigantium amendate accommodata – had the main merit of being the first world projection elaborated in the Modern Era, that is, with the European maritime expansion and the discovery of new continents, it was the Mercator Projection that first managed to represent the spherical globe of the Earth in a flat.
Mercator projection in a graphic rework carried out in 1860
The Mercator projection is of the conformal type, that is, it conserves the shape of the continents, but alters the dimension of their areas. It divides the planet into 24 meridians and 12 parallels (the same ones designed to establish time zones), evenly spaced and distributed over the Earth's layer.
The main merit of Mercator's projection was its ability to cartographically represent a rhumb line as a straight line. For this reason, his work is widely used for navigation to the present day.
As with any and all projections that aim to represent the terrestrial sphere on a plane, the Mercator chart presents some distortions. As we have already said, these distortions occur in the size of the areas of the continents, so that they become more evident as we approach the poles. Note the projection below:
Mercator projection currently used
It is possible to notice, for example, that Greenland, on the map, is basically the same size as Brazil, being that, in fact, its area is 4 times smaller. Europe, in turn, is also an exaggerated size, while Africa becomes quite small. For this reason, its use is only recommended on nautical charts or for representations that have a very large scale (very small areas).
One criticism that this projection receives is the fact that it has a Eurocentric character. If we consider the historical-geographic context in which it was elaborated, we can better understand this issue. After all, its elaboration took place at a time when European maritime expansions were at their climax, so that the southern regions of the planet were not considered "important", and could have their areas distorted without problems.
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/geografia/projecao-mercator.htm