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Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Natural sciences · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology
 An atlas is a collection of maps, traditionally bound into book form, but now found in multimedia formats. As well as geographic features and political boundaries, many often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics. The first book that could be called an atlas was constructed from the calculations of Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek geographer working in Alexandria circa A.D. 150. The first edition was published in Bologna in 1477 and was illustrated with a set of 27 maps, though scholars say that it is not known whether the printed maps were engraved versions of original maps made by Ptolemy, or whether they were constructed by medieval Greek scholars from Ptolemy's text.  The origin of the term atlas is a common source of misconception, perhaps because two different mythical figures named 'Atlas' are associated with mapmaking. King Atlas, a mythical King of Mauretania, was, according to legend, a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who supposedly made the first celestial globe. However, the more widely known Atlas is a figure from Greek mythology. More about Atlases...
 Credit: Alexandre Van de Sande Oceans cover almost three quarters (71%) of the surface of the Earth, and nearly half of the world's marine waters are over 3000 m deep. This global, interconnected body of salt water, called the World Ocean, is divided by the continents and archipelagos into the following five bodies, from the largest to the smallest: the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean. Official boundaries are defined by the International Hydrographic Organization.  Cartography or mapmaking is the study and practice of making representations of the Earth on a flat surface. The discipline of cartography combines science, aesthetics, and technical ability to create a balanced and readable representation that is capable of communicating information effectively and quickly. Cartographic representation involves the use of symbols and lines to illustrate geographic phenomena. This can aid in visualizing space in an abstract and portable format. Functioning as tools, maps communicate spatial information by making it visible. Spatial information is acquired from measurement of space and can be stored in a database, from which it can be extracted for a variety of purposes. Current trends in this field are moving away from analog methods of mapmaking and toward the creation of increasingly dynamic, interactive maps that can be manipulated digitally.  Erhard Etzlaub, was an astronomer, geodesist, cartographer, instrument maker and physician. From letters from a third party dated 1500 and 1507, we learn that he was a well-known instrument ("compass") maker and a geodesist, and from a letter dated 1517, that "he had also practicised as a physician for at least four years". His death is noted in as the 15th entry in an official list of 20 people buried between December 20, 1531 and February 21, 1532. On occasion of the Holy Year 1500, when many pilgrims were expected to go to Rome, he designed his famous "Rom-Weg" map, a 41 x 29 cm wood engraving in stereographic projection of app. scale 1:5,6 mio., the earliest printed road map of central Europe. It is, as all of Etzlaub's maps, "South-up". Distances between cities can be computed by dotted lines, where a one-dot-step means one German Mile (7400m). If the prints were coloured, they show political regions, too. Atlas - Geography - Topography Cartography: Cartographers - History of cartography - Ancient world maps - World maps Map projection: Azimuthal equidistant - "Butterfly" - Dymaxion - Gall-Peters - General Perspective - Goode homolosine - Mercator - Mollweide - Orthographic - Peirce quincuncial - Robinson - Sinusoidal - Stereographic Maps: Cartogram - Geologic map - Linguistic map - Nautical chart - Pictorial map - Reversed map - Thematic map - Topographic map - Weather map - World map |
