More in The Map

• EssaySpeculum ChartarumFifteen landmark maps from antiquity to early-modern geodesy, each plotted not on a timeline of progress but as a coordinate in a six-dimensional space of cartographic values.
• MapBabylonian World MapThe Imago Mundi - earth as a disc ringed by the bitter river.
• CartographerGerardus MercatorFlemish cartographer, engraver and instrument-maker whose 1569 projection made rhumb lines straight for navigators - at the cost of grossly inflating the high latitudes. He coined the term "atlas" for a bound collection of maps.
• EssayMaps That AgeA map can keep its title while its plate cracks, fades, is repaired, recut and corrected. Nine Ortelius impressions reveal age as an editorial history, not a date.
• MapEratosthenes' WorldA measured earth: the first grid of parallels and meridians.
• CartographerAbraham OrteliusBrabantian cartographer and geographer whose Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) is regarded as the first modern atlas: a uniform, bound set of map sheets with a credited list of sources.