Download or read book Flattening the Earth written by John P. Snyder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1997-12-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cartographers have long grappled with the impossibility of portraying the earth in two dimensions. To solve this problem, mapmakers have created map projections. This work discusses and illustrates the known map projections from before 500BC to the present, with facts on their origins and use.