Today, we'll be asking, is the world definitely round?
Yes.
- Welcome to Map Men - We're the men
And here's the map.
♫ Map Men, Map Men ♫ Map Map Map Men Men.
Here at Map Men, we love a good globe.
Because it's a map, but also a toy.
But globes aren't very convenient because they're bulky and difficult to carry around.
Unless your friends attach one to your head for your stag do and make you wear it all around Bristol.
So, if you want the world in a book or a poster or a shower curtain,
that globe is going to have to be flattened. But it's a notoriously challenging task.
The best way to demonstrate the difficulty of displaying the curved earth on a flat map
is to take an easy-peel orange, and you'll find that even with a rolling pin,
you just can't make the damn thing flat. Stupid orange! Stop being round! Start being flat!
But you can make juice.
The only exception is the map produced by the Flat Earth Society
because apparently, this is a real bird's-eye view of the world.
Antarctica conveniently encircles the earth "to stop the water falling off"(!)
So because flat-earthers don't believe in the globe, they're not actually distorting it.
But they are distorting the minds of vulnerable loners scouring the internet for answers
in an increasingly incomprehensible world.
Meanwhile, us gullible round-earth believers have a dilemma:
You can't flatten a round thing without ruining it.
You either have to stretch bits, squash bits, or slice bits.
But a clever solution came along in 1569 from a Belgian man...
Flemish - Belgium wasn't a thing.
...Flemish man called Gerard Mercator.
This is my Mercator costume?
Yeah, Mercator was a globe maker... who loved cricket and stag dos.
His ingenious solution was to imagine the earth like a balloon covered in ink.
and then imagine the balloon in a big cardboard tube
and then imagine inflating the balloon inside the tube
and then unfolding the big cardboard tube and looking at the results.
This was impressive for a man who'd never travelled more than 200 kilometres from where he was born
and especially impressive as they hadn't even invented balloons or big cardboard tubes
or Belgium.
Mercator's projection became so successful, it stood the test of very very long time
and earned its status as the official definitive flat map of the world.
Maps using the Mercator projection have been used extensively in schools,
TV weather maps, bad tattoos, it's even used by Apple Maps.
So it's great. The end.
♫ ♫ ♫
Whoa! Hold your onions, sonny Jim me lad me boy.
The Mercator projection is not without its problems.
When you inflate a balloon in a tube, the top of the balloon has to stretch to touch the sides.
As a result, countries near the poles look bigger.
This has the naughty effect of making Greenland look about the same size as all of Africa,
when in real life, it's about the size of Greenland.
As well as being inaccurate, more worryingly it's a bit racist.
It's well known that the Mercator projection was designed to make
the colonial powers of northern Europe look bigger, and make Africa look smaller.
Well, that's wrongly well known.
The Mercator projection had nothing to do with racism and everything to do with navigation.
Before Mercator, all maps had a problem.
If you were a sailor and tried following a straight line on the map
the curvature of the earth meant you'd gradually drift off course.
Help!
But with the Mercator projection, a straight line on the map was the same as a straight line on the sea...
as long as your compass wasn't broken.
OK, I hereby concede that the Mercator projection is not racist on purpose.
But it was still a problem that needed solving.
So, in the 1970s, a German man called Arno Peters tried... *tried* to make a better map.
Why is this my Arno Peters costume?
- Revenge. - Oh!
The Peters projection sacrifices accuracy of shape in favour of accuracy of scale.
The polar regions are squished and the bits near the Equator are stretched
fixing the Greenland problem, and making Russia look far less intimidating.
- It's a great map! - It's a terrible map!
Why?
First of all, Arno is a stupid name.
Secondly, he wasn't a map maker, he was a publicist...
(spits)
...who copied the work of James Gall.
Work which was so abundantly terrible it should never have been copied in the first place.
Look at the shape of Africa. It's awful!
- Can I say something controversial? - Go on...
So what?
(gasp!)
Ask yourself, what is the point of a map on a classroom wall?
Is it to teach children how to navigate the ocean in a boat?
No, it's so they can understand the world around them.
And understanding something like Africa is huge is pretty important.
I think it's important that Africa doesn't look like a sad piece of melted cheese.
- Well, ultimately there is no right answer... - Except mine.
...because every flat map of a round world is necessarily wrong.
But loads of map makers have tried to come up with their own solutions over the years.
And here are a few of our favourite attempts...
- Eurgh. - Eurgh.
Ooh, that's clever.
Ha ha ha. No.
Ooh, pointy!
Hmm... not bad... but quite bad.
Nope! Nope! Nope nope nope!
Aargh! Aaargh!!
So it looks like the only way round the pesky projection problem is to join the Flat Earth Society.
Jay, will you do the honours?
Gladly.
Come on! Be flat, you stupid round thing!
Be flat! Flatten!!
Why aren't you flat, you stupid big round...
(they laugh)
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N'oh.