Study sheet: History and Practice of Cartography

📋 Course Outline

1. Cartography and Geographic Knowledge
2. Geographic Coordinates and Time
3. Projections, Relief, and Scale
4. Cartography from Antiquity to Renaissance
5. Modern Cartographic Measurement
6. Digital Data and Positioning Systems
7. Maps as Selective Representations

📅 Key Dates

1. 6th to the 3rd century BCGreek thinkers developed a spherical conception of Earth, geographic coordinates, and attempts to represent the known world
2. 1569Mercator began creating the first true coherent atlas and empirically developed the cylindrical projection that bears his name, inspired by portulans
3. 1884the Greenwich meridian became the definitive reference meridian for longitude and Greenwich Mean Time became universal time
4. 2002the European Union decided to launch Galileo as a competing satellite-positioning system intended to create European independence from the United States and improve positioning precision

📖 1. Cartography and Geographic Knowledge

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Cartography : both the discipline that establishes maps using graphic and semiological techniques and a geographic research instrument used to establish relationships and explain phenomena
• Graphic semiology : the set of rules used to translate information into graphic form

★ Must-know

📌 A topographic map represents relief and the main human activities as an inventory, whereas a thematic map represents a particular qualitative or quantitative phenomenon.

Further detail

• Modern maps increasingly aim to understand and explain complex phenomena by emphasizing relationships rather than merely locating places.

💡 Memory Hook

A topographic map inventories space, whereas a thematic map explains a phenomenon.

📖 2. Geographic Coordinates and Time

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Latitude : the angular position of a point relative to the equator, measured between the equatorial plane and the vertical passing through that point
• Longitude : the angle between the reference meridian and the vertical plane passing through a point

★ Must-know

• The equator has latitude 0° and separates the northern, or boreal, hemisphere from the southern, or austral, hemisphere.

Further detail

• The Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn lie at latitude 23° 26′ in the northern and southern hemispheres respectively, while the Arctic and Antarctic Circles lie at latitude 66° 33′.

💡 Memory Hook

Picture Earth wrapped in parallel circles and meridians meeting at the poles.

📖 3. Projections, Relief, and Scale

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Contour line : or isohypse, joins all points at the same altitude relative to a reference level such as sea level

★ Must-know

📌 Because Earth is spherical, no flat projection can preserve distances, areas, and angles simultaneously.

📌 The Mercator projection preserves angles but considerably distorts surfaces at high latitudes, while the Peters projection preserves surfaces but distorts distances.

📌 A small cartographic scale such as 1/1 000 000 requires greater selection of information, whereas a large scale such as 1/25 000 approaches exhaustiveness.

Further detail

• The Bertin projections distort angles relatively little, while the polar projection produces increasingly large distortions farther from the map centre.

💡 Memory Hook

Mercator preserves angles, Peters preserves surfaces, and neither preserves everything.

📖 4. Cartography from Antiquity to Renaissance

★ Must-know

• Roman cartography developed practical documents including:

  • cadastres for land division and taxation
  • itineraries giving distances between cities
  • elongated tabulae such as the Peutinger Table

• Ptolemy’s Geography, produced around 100–170, synthesized ancient cartographic knowledge and was later rediscovered in Western Europe through Byzantine and Arab copies.

• In the 13th century, Italian sailors developed precise nautical charts and portulans using coastal descriptions, distances, ports, compass directions, and rhumb lines.

Further detail

• Until the 12th century, Western medieval mappae mundi combined theological works, geographic knowledge, religious beliefs, and mythical monsters.

💡 Memory Hook

Greeks theorize → Romans administer → Ptolemy synthesizes → navigators chart → Renaissance atlases.

📖 5. Modern Cartographic Measurement

★ Must-know

• Under Louis XIV and Colbert, the French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1699, supported detailed mapping of the kingdom and more precise measurement of Earth and longitude using triangulation.

Further detail

• The traditional division of inhabited emerged land into five continents is:
  • Africa
  • America
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Oceania

💡 Memory Hook

Scientific measurement and triangulation → more accurate national maps.

📖 6. Digital Data and Positioning Systems

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Geographic information system : or GIS, is a computerized system that organizes, classifies, selects, and processes geographically referenced information in databases
• GNSS : a satellite positioning system whose radio signals determine the exact position of an object on Earth’s surface

📝 Essential Points

• Modern map production involves collecting information and then representing the selected data.

• Cartographic data are collected through:

  • field surveys
  • aerial photography
  • photogrammetry
  • drones
  • satellite remote sensing

💡 Memory Hook

Collect data → select information → process it in databases and GIS → locate objects with GNSS.

📖 7. Maps as Selective Representations

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Discretization : Discretization is the grouping of statistical data into classes, such as equal-count classes using quintiles or classes standardized relative to the mean.

★ Must-know

• A map is a model and simplification of reality rather than an identical reconstruction, because its scale requires selecting information and its form reflects its production conditions, norms, and values. — Jorge Luis Borges, De la Figure scientique, 1946

Further detail

📌 Different cartographic choices can produce different visual representations of the same phenomenon while remaining accurate.

💡 Memory Hook

A map can be exact without being identical to reality.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Main Map Types and Projections

Type or projection	Main property	Main limitation
Topographic map	Shows relief and principal human activities	Functions mainly as an inventory
Thematic map	Shows a qualitative or quantitative phenomenon	Focuses on selected information
Mercator projection	Preserves angles	Distorts high-latitude surfaces
Peters projection	Preserves surfaces	Distorts distances