Cartographic Perspectives (E-Journal - North American Cartographic Information Society, NACIS)
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A Low-Distortion Oblique Map Projection of the World’s Landmasses
No full textThis study presents the development of a world map projection intended to minimize distortion of all continents. I begin by reviewing a very similar map projection developed by Canters (2002), and address its shortcomings by carefully fine-tuning the initial constraints and the method of optimization, while retaining the most useful ideas of this earlier map. Most notably, the method described in this paper puts a great emphasis on the outline of the map, so that its aesthetics make it more suitable for atlases; the method also exclusively uses reproducible, deterministic methods. Finally, I compare the resulting world map to the original one of Canters in terms of map distortions and practical usefulness. The method presented here should work without changes if a low-distortion map of any other global-scale area is needed
US Navy Aerial Photography Squadrons in Türkiye: American Interests in Cold War Cartography
No full textThis article explores a little-known archive of historical aerial photographs curated by the General Directorate of Mapping of the Republic of Türkiye’s Ministry of Defense and discusses the historical context of their production by US Navy aerial photography squadrons in the 1950s. While the images themselves enable a technical analysis of the method of their collection, contemporary military manuals, domain-specific magazines and newsletters, and eyewitness accounts of how similar photographs were captured fill out the contexts of their production for cartographic purposes, with information about the aircraft involved, their cameras and camera configurations, and mission characteristics. Continuing sections situate the aerial surveys within the framework of US-led initiatives in mapping NATO territories following World War II. As one example of what must have been many special mapping agreements made between NATO countries at this time, the US cartographic surveys over Türkiye discussed here are an expression of postwar realignments of global power, put to the purposes of containment-based security preparations and infrastructure development, and neatly intertwining American military and commercial interests early in the Cold War
Is it a Map? The Map / Not Map Question
No full textThis paper is an evaluation of the issues raised in my own “Making Explicit What has Been Implicit: A Call for a Conceptual Theory of Cartography,” and Matthew Edney’s “Making Explicit the Implicit, Idealized Understanding of ‘Map’ and ‘Cartography’: An Anti-Universalist Response to Mark Denil” (both published in Cartographic Perspectives 98, 2022).
In the first of these articles I make some proposals about how to go about investigating how a map reader decides that a given artifact is a map, and what that decision means for the user’s relationship with the artifact. In the second, Edney vigorously rejects my argument as, variously: irrelevant, reactionary, subversive, pernicious, obvious, and trite.
What are Edney and I arguing about? Does the map / not map question I raise even exist and, if so, does it matter? Is Edney correct in dismissing it, and are his reasons for dismissing it valid?
This paper examines some of the salient points raised in the Denil / Edney controversy, with an eye to the pragmatic, real-world ramifications of each writer’s positions
