John Paul Goode - Evil Mercator

Evil Mercator

In 1908, Goode spoke at an American Association of Geographers meeting in Baltimore, USA about the creating an alternative to the “Evil Mercator” (Hass and Ward 244). The Mercator projection has severe distortion at the poles and northern latitudes. Goode merged the homolographic and sinusoidal projections at 40° 44’ 11.8” N and S to make the Goode Interrupted Homolosine projection (Stienwand 1). The “homolo” coming from homolographic, and the “sine” originating from sinusoidal. He calculated the latitude where the two projections had the same scale and therefore should be merged by overlaying the two projections on each other. Above and below 40° 44’ 11.8” N and S respectively, the homolographic projection is used. Between those two latitudes the sinusoidal projection is inserted. The Interrupted Homolosine projection is a pseudo-cylindrical, equal area projection. Initially, Goode’s Homolosine projection did not have universal appeal. The United States not being at the center of the map challenged the cartographic culture of the time (Schulten 187).