One of the grandfathers of modern navigation Gerardus
Mercator is being rightly celebrated in Google Doodle form today in honour of
his 503rd birthday.
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| The Google Doodle - a stylised Google logo - in honour of cartographer, philosopher and mathematician Gerardus Mercator on internet search giant Google’s homepage |
Born in modern-day Belgium in 1512, Mercator in his adult
life was what would be called today a ‘cartiophile’ – lover of maps. Despite
spending his days earning his keep as a craftsman creating mathematical
instruments, he would spend much of his spare time working on his own map
creations.
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ORBIS TERRAE COMPENDIOSA DESCRIPTIO,
From Atlas sive Cormographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et
Fabricati Figura, Mercator's heirs, 1602.
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While Mercator’s legacy lays him claim as the person who
coined the term ‘atlas’ as a collection of maps, arguably his greatest
achievement was the development of a whole new means of nautical navigation,
that being the inclusion of longitude and latitude lines to give sailors a
better representation of their current bearing.
As Mercator grew older – much longer than what would have
been common at the time – he teamed up with a man named Abraham Ortelius to
compile the first world atlas in 1570 known as the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
Of course, the atlas was only a representation of what was
thought to be the world at that time.
Before he died in 1594, at the age of 82, Mercator went on to
become the world’s leading maker of globes, 22 of which are still in existence
today.
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