Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Gall–Peters projection
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Origins and naming== The Gall–Peters projection was first described in 1855 by the Scottish clergyman [[James Gall]], who presented it along with two other projections at the Glasgow meeting of the [[British Association for the Advancement of Science]] (the BA). He gave it the name "orthographic" and formally published his work in 1885 in the ''Scottish Geographical Magazine''.<ref name="Gall"/> The projection is suggestive of the [[Orthographic projection (cartography)|orthographic projection]] in that distances between parallels of the Gall–Peters are a constant multiple of the distances between the parallels of the orthographic. That constant is {{radic|2}}. In 1967, the German filmmaker [[Arno Peters]] independently devised a similar projection, which he presented in 1973 as the "Peters world map". Peters's original description of his projection contained a geometric error that, taken literally, implies standard parallels of 46°02′ N/S. However the text accompanying the description made it clear that he had intended the standard parallels to be 45° N/S, making his projection identical to Gall's orthographic.<ref name="Maling">Maling, D.H. (1993). ''Coordinate Systems and Map Projections'', second edition, second printing, p. 431. Oxford: Pergamon Press. {{ISBN|0-08-037234-1}}.</ref> In any case, the difference is negligible in a world map. The name "Gall–Peters projection" seems to have been used first by [[Arthur H. Robinson]] in a pamphlet put out by the American Cartographic Association in 1986.<ref name="ACA1986">American Cartographic Association's Committee on Map Projections, 1986. ''Which Map is Best'' p. 12. Falls Church: American Congress on Surveying and Mapping.</ref> Before 1973 it had been known, when referred to at all, as the "Gall orthographic" or "Gall's orthographic". Most Peters supporters refer to it as the "Peters projection". During the years of [[#Peters world map controversy|controversy]], the cartographic articles tended to use one name or the other, while acknowledging both names. In recent years "Gall–Peters" seems to dominate.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024|reason=cf https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Gall+projection%2Cgall+map%2CPeters+projection%2Cpeters+map%2CGall-Peters+projection%2Cgall-peters+map&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true}}
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)