What do you think?
Rate this book
The World Of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker who Revolutionised Geography
The true story of Gerard Mercator, the greatest map-maker of all time, who was condemned to death as a heretic.
Geographie and Chronologie I may call the Sunne and the Moone, the right eye and the left, of all history.
In The World of Gerard Mercator, Andrew Taylor chronicles both the story of a great astronomer and mathematician, who was condemned to death as a heretic, and the history of that most fascinating conjunction of science and art: the drawing of maps. Gerard Mercator was born in Flanders in 1512. In addition to creating accurate globes of the earth and the stars, he was the first person to use latitude and longitude for navigation and he created the most-used map of all time: Mercator s Projection is still the standard view of the world, the one we all envisage when we think of a map of the globe. Simply finding the best solution to the impossible challenge of reproducing the spherical world on a flat sheet of paper was a considerable achievement in itself something geographers and map-makers had been trying to do for centuries, but Mercator also created the map of the world that would form the basis of the modern age, an image of the continents for the common man.
Until Mercator s Projection, maps offered a pictorial encyclopaedia to an illiterate world, and that world stretched far beyond the knowledge and travels of most mapmakers. It is this evolution of mapmaking from art to science that forms the backdrop to the story of Mercator, from the days of Herodotus and Strabo when fabulous creatures were supposed to inhabit the fringes of the world to the great mappae mundi of Hereford and Ebsdorf. The Greek geographer Pytheas claimed to have visited the far north of Britain to establish the limits of the habitable world; but further north, he claimed that the earth, air and sea coalesced into a jellyfish-like gelatinous suspension that made life impossible.
The World of Gerard Mercator is a brilliantly readable and absolutely fascinating history for the general reader, describing how our worldview came into being."
Geographie and Chronologie I may call the Sunne and the Moone, the right eye and the left, of all history.
In The World of Gerard Mercator, Andrew Taylor chronicles both the story of a great astronomer and mathematician, who was condemned to death as a heretic, and the history of that most fascinating conjunction of science and art: the drawing of maps. Gerard Mercator was born in Flanders in 1512. In addition to creating accurate globes of the earth and the stars, he was the first person to use latitude and longitude for navigation and he created the most-used map of all time: Mercator s Projection is still the standard view of the world, the one we all envisage when we think of a map of the globe. Simply finding the best solution to the impossible challenge of reproducing the spherical world on a flat sheet of paper was a considerable achievement in itself something geographers and map-makers had been trying to do for centuries, but Mercator also created the map of the world that would form the basis of the modern age, an image of the continents for the common man.
Until Mercator s Projection, maps offered a pictorial encyclopaedia to an illiterate world, and that world stretched far beyond the knowledge and travels of most mapmakers. It is this evolution of mapmaking from art to science that forms the backdrop to the story of Mercator, from the days of Herodotus and Strabo when fabulous creatures were supposed to inhabit the fringes of the world to the great mappae mundi of Hereford and Ebsdorf. The Greek geographer Pytheas claimed to have visited the far north of Britain to establish the limits of the habitable world; but further north, he claimed that the earth, air and sea coalesced into a jellyfish-like gelatinous suspension that made life impossible.
The World of Gerard Mercator is a brilliantly readable and absolutely fascinating history for the general reader, describing how our worldview came into being."
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
11 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
James Andrew Taylor
23 books8 followersCredited as Andrew Taylor on most works.
Andrew Taylor has been a freelance writer since 2004, but he has been working in newspapers, magazines, and television, in both Europe and the Middle East, for nearly 35 years. Before that, so long ago that he can hardly remember, he read English at Oxford University.
After training on the Yorkshire Evening Post, in Leeds, he worked as a political journalist for the Press Association and the Daily Express in the House of Commons, Westminster, and then went to BBC Television News as a national news reporter. From there, he travelled to Dubai to work as a news editor, news reporter, news reader, and news-everything-else for Dubai Television (DTV) for five years, and then came back to England to run DTV’s London office.
He began writing books in the early 1990s. Then after being made redundant in a major reorganisation of DTV – an experience he later wrote about in Burning the Suit – he established himself in freelance writing and journalism.
Andrew Taylor has been a freelance writer since 2004, but he has been working in newspapers, magazines, and television, in both Europe and the Middle East, for nearly 35 years. Before that, so long ago that he can hardly remember, he read English at Oxford University.
After training on the Yorkshire Evening Post, in Leeds, he worked as a political journalist for the Press Association and the Daily Express in the House of Commons, Westminster, and then went to BBC Television News as a national news reporter. From there, he travelled to Dubai to work as a news editor, news reporter, news reader, and news-everything-else for Dubai Television (DTV) for five years, and then came back to England to run DTV’s London office.
He began writing books in the early 1990s. Then after being made redundant in a major reorganisation of DTV – an experience he later wrote about in Burning the Suit – he established himself in freelance writing and journalism.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Read
March 30, 2017ο άνθρωπος πίσω από την εικόνα του κόσμου κρεμασμένη σε κάθε σχολική αίθουσα ο οποίος έπεφτε πάντα έξω κατά μερικά χρόνια στην εκτίμησή του - συνήθως αισιόδοξη - για την ολοκλήρωση των έργων του. ως προς αυτό, αξιαγάπητος.
February 1, 2024
THE LINES OF LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE
While writing an article about the 1900 navigational feat of the Warrimoo (see https://grahamsegger.com/sailing-logs...), I was reminded of a couple of books I had previously enjoyed on related topics. Working in chronological order of the subject matter, the first was The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who Revolutionized Geography by Andrew Taylor. The second was Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel.
I loved the Mercator book as much for its historical insights into the 16th century, a period which has always fascinated me, as for its explanation of how to solve the thorny problem of mapping a round globe onto a flat two dimensional map. Mercator’s life (1512-1594) spanned most of that century which included the exploration of the new world, the religious inquisition and reformation, and the artistic renaissance. The religious convulsions were particularly relevant to Mercator’s story as his assertion that the world was round contradicted the teachings of the catholic church. At one point he was imprisoned by the Inquisition in Flanders as a result of his theories.
Longitude is the story of John Harrison (1693-1776), an English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer which assisted mariners in measuring longitude at sea. It is hard to over-estimate how his invention revolutionized the safety of navigation at sea. The fundamental problem he solved was how to design and manufacture a mechanical time piece which would keep accurate time on a ship while being buffeted by ocean waves and storms. The problem was of such significance that a large cash prize was promised to anyone who could create the clock, a prize which Harrison eventually won. Sobel is an excellent writer on science topics.
Anyone interested in how the 24 time zones were conceived might enjoy reading about Sir Sandford Fleming, the Canadian railway engineer who developed the time zone system now used throughout most of the world. There are numerous concise summaries of his life and innovations available online.
While writing an article about the 1900 navigational feat of the Warrimoo (see https://grahamsegger.com/sailing-logs...), I was reminded of a couple of books I had previously enjoyed on related topics. Working in chronological order of the subject matter, the first was The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who Revolutionized Geography by Andrew Taylor. The second was Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel.
I loved the Mercator book as much for its historical insights into the 16th century, a period which has always fascinated me, as for its explanation of how to solve the thorny problem of mapping a round globe onto a flat two dimensional map. Mercator’s life (1512-1594) spanned most of that century which included the exploration of the new world, the religious inquisition and reformation, and the artistic renaissance. The religious convulsions were particularly relevant to Mercator’s story as his assertion that the world was round contradicted the teachings of the catholic church. At one point he was imprisoned by the Inquisition in Flanders as a result of his theories.
Longitude is the story of John Harrison (1693-1776), an English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer which assisted mariners in measuring longitude at sea. It is hard to over-estimate how his invention revolutionized the safety of navigation at sea. The fundamental problem he solved was how to design and manufacture a mechanical time piece which would keep accurate time on a ship while being buffeted by ocean waves and storms. The problem was of such significance that a large cash prize was promised to anyone who could create the clock, a prize which Harrison eventually won. Sobel is an excellent writer on science topics.
Anyone interested in how the 24 time zones were conceived might enjoy reading about Sir Sandford Fleming, the Canadian railway engineer who developed the time zone system now used throughout most of the world. There are numerous concise summaries of his life and innovations available online.
April 18, 2021
I quite liked this book. Gerard Mercator was a most interesting fellow. He begins his life with almost nothing and finds a niche that truly puts him on the world stage. I am a history buff and yet I had no idea how terrible and bloody the 16th cent was for the Low Countries of Europe. As if the plague was not enough as it roars through Europe regularly, Mercator escapes the terrors of two of evilest of Spain's men, at time when so many innocents died for being in the wrong town. He's clearly trying to create maps for folks to navigate by, hard to do when those pesky "here be dragons" live on the edge of most maps of his time. By the end of his life, he's got enough information to begin developing maps for North America. I didn't know there was even that much info but he was most inventive in making sure he had to most up to date info. He made globes, basic and bejeweled and sold them at book fairs. Book fairs! I love the idea that there are so many books by this time, there's book fairs that folks from everywhere. He develops atlas, that can be carried by navigators who don't have huge tables for his giant maps. Growing up w/ not much family, he creates one that means a great deal to him.
Now if only I could have understood the development of the Mercator projection. That just wasn't as clear as I would have liked. I understood the problem and the difficulties of previous maps and navigating. I understood, I think, the Mercator's answers to the challenges. But I struggled to understand how he got there. Maybe because Mr. Taylor is trying to develop the story of Mercator and weave in the cartological challenges as part of the story that it seems so murky. If I was going to republish this, I would add an appendix, a simple guide to Mercator's projection and how he got there.
This took me a while to finish because I kept trying to figure out the map stuff AND because I was aghast at the sheer bloody awfulness of the times. But having said that, it is a fascinating story and would make a great movie about a most interesting man who literally changed the world.
Now if only I could have understood the development of the Mercator projection. That just wasn't as clear as I would have liked. I understood the problem and the difficulties of previous maps and navigating. I understood, I think, the Mercator's answers to the challenges. But I struggled to understand how he got there. Maybe because Mr. Taylor is trying to develop the story of Mercator and weave in the cartological challenges as part of the story that it seems so murky. If I was going to republish this, I would add an appendix, a simple guide to Mercator's projection and how he got there.
This took me a while to finish because I kept trying to figure out the map stuff AND because I was aghast at the sheer bloody awfulness of the times. But having said that, it is a fascinating story and would make a great movie about a most interesting man who literally changed the world.
July 21, 2021
I really enjoyed the first half of the book. I wanted to know what happened next…by the end I just wanted to find out the details on how he turned the globe onto a flat map that the world used for hundred of years.
Read
May 20, 2024naamgenoot, droge kost
January 7, 2022
Good, but the definitive account of Mercator's life is the book by Nicholas Crane.
Read
January 5, 2011This book is about some fascinating stuff - the history of the discovery of the world and figuring out how to make a map to represent it. But it was too dry for me. I'm not good with dates and events unless there's more of a story around them. This book came highly recommended so I'm pretty sure others, those who eat up history, would like it. Me, I read the first third, skipped the middle, read the bit where Mercator worked out how to spread out longitude and latitude on a map (no information exists to say how he reached this approach) and then I closed the book forever.
January 26, 2010
An acceptable biography of the man who figured out a new way to project a spherical world onto a rectangular piece of paper. Not a bad book by any stretch, but there perhaps wasn’t a lot of source material to work from; I learned at least as much about the Dutch Revolt as I did of Mercator’s life. Design/layout was desultory but functional. Points off for not including an index to all the maps in the book (!!).
discontinued
August 29, 2018Dry and boring. Only got to chapter 2.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews