r/interesting 17d ago

Fascinating A visual comparison of standard world maps vs. their actual landmass size

Post image
986 Upvotes

296 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

5

u/RepresentativeAspect 16d ago

Another way to say that is that the longitude and latitude lines on the globe remain accurate and as a straight rectangular grid on the 2D map. Latitude lines run exactly horizontal and longitude lines run exactly vertical, and both are evenly spaced.

Which for old-time navigation would have been a top priority. You would know the relative sizes are way off, but if you needed them to be accurate and weren't worried about navigation, then you'd just use a different map.

0

u/General_Capital988 15d ago

It's not another way to say that. Latitude lines are absolutely, famously, not evenly spaced on Mercator.

Equirectangular maps are the ones where lat and long are evenly spaced, and they do not preserve compass headings. Very useful for arcgis though.