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World map. A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of the Earth. While this is true of any map, these distortions reach extremes in a world map.
The history of longitude describes the centuries-long effort by astronomers, cartographers and navigators to discover a means of determining the longitude of any given place on Earth. The measurement of longitude is important to both cartography and navigation. In particular, for safe ocean navigation, knowledge of both latitude and longitude ...
v. t. e. A geographic coordinate system ( GCS) is a spherical or geodetic coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on Earth as latitude and longitude. [ 1] It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used of the various spatial reference systems that are in use, and forms the basis for most others.
The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity, the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm. World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appear in the Hellenistic period. The developments of Greek geography during this time, notably by Eratosthenes and Posidonius culminated in the Roman ...
In cartography, a map projection is any of a broad set of transformations employed to represent the curved two-dimensional surface of a globe on a plane. [ 1][ 2][ 3] In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitude, of locations from the surface of the globe are transformed to coordinates on a plane. [ 4][ 5 ...
Meridians run between the North and South poles. In geography and geodesy, a meridian is the locus connecting points of equal longitude, which is the angle (in degrees or other units) east or west of a given prime meridian (currently, the IERS Reference Meridian ). [ 1] In other words, it is a line of longitude.
Longitude ( / ˈlɒndʒɪtjuːd /, AU and UK also / ˈlɒŋɡɪ -/) [ 1][ 2] is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east – west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter lambda (λ). Meridians are imaginary ...
The history of cartography refers to the development and consequences of cartography, or mapmaking technology, throughout human history. Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way through the world. When and how the earliest maps were made is unclear, but maps of ...