Mercator
While Flanders experienced serious religious conflict between Protestant and Catholic reformers traditional direction. In Leuven, a list of the 43 residents involved in the heretical teachings. This list was and Mercator. In February 1544 he was arrested and placed in one of the casemates. Through the intercession of some influential persons, seven months he was released, though many of those with whom he shared the imprisonment, were executed. Mercator's position remained precarious, and he decided to leave the Netherlands.
At the invitation of the Duke of Cleves, he moved to the German city of Duisburg, where the supposed foundation of the university. Subsequently, it will create the Duisburg Mercator his largest works.
Above all, these include three large wall maps, preserved in a single specimen:
* Map of the world. 1569 g.Karta Europe. 1554
* Map of the British Isles. 1564
* Map of the World, "a new and more complete picture of the world, which are tested and adapted for use in navigation." 1569
On the last work should mention. As its name implies, it was intended primarily for mariners. Mercator, which never made voyages, nevertheless saw great disadvantage existed at the time charts - namely - the inability to easily identify a flat map and draw a course of the ship, even using a goniometer and a compass, as the angle between two lines on the flat maps and on the spherical surface of the Earth is not the same. Mercator's great invention, and consisted in the fact that he found a way to build charts, where sh is a straight line, and the azimuth is not distorted.
This method is now called Mercator projection and applied to the construction of marine charts worldwide. As amended, it is used for topographic maps of land, produced in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and other countries. It is also the basis for Google maps and most of the navigators, who is familiar to every motorist.
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