Maps!
Secretly Incredibly Fascinating
00:00
The Mercator Projection
Girardis Mercator was a Flemish polymath. He came up with this while he was working for wealthy patrons in feudal Germany. His 1569 map is a huge hit in Europe. It sparks many further maps relying on his system. But it distorts the sizes of land, making places like Greenland and Northern Europe look much bigger than they are.
Transcript
Play full episode
