# All maps are wrong!

hands-on

All maps are wrong!

## Credits

Michel Darche
Regis Goiffon

C. F. Gauss (1777-1855) showed that it is impossible to preserve all ratios of distances when drawing a planar map of a region of the Earth. But do we need to sacrifice everything?

When drawing a map, one represents each point of the spherical Earth by a point on a plane, or a cone, or on a cylinder, that we can later unroll. The process is called a projection.

When the angles are conserved, the projection is called “conformal”. This is the case of the Mercator projection. This projection allows navigators to follow a straight line on a conformal map using a compass.

In the Peters Atlas, each point is projected horizontally on the cylinder. This process is called Lambert projection. It preserves ratios of areas and respects the relative size of countries. The projection is called “equivalent”.

This module is part of the MPE exhibition. You can rent this module for a lumpsum fee. A detailed manual how to rebuild this module will be shared.