Dear Tony, What a fun thread you have spawned!
Mercator is possibly the most famous Belgian, not that Belgium existed in his day but let's overlook that detail. The mathematics of Mercator's projection is quite challenging. Certainly Mercator himself didn't understand it! The first proper analysis was by Edward Wright who was a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge in the days when there were 67 sundials in Caius Court. They are now down to their last six. To be sure the projection distorts sizes so Greenland appears about the same size as Africa but the UK is pretty small and the distortion is minimal. I do not understand Linda's map! As John Foad didn't quite say, this is decidedly an Alex Salmond projection. I'd use Mercator's projection for your project if possible. After all, that's what the Ordnance Survey use, albeit they turn the projection through a right-angle (the "equator" runs north to south). Peters's projection is really (in my view) the Gall Orthographic (Peters was over 100 years after Gall). It has no special advantages for a region the size of the U.K. I hope you find a proper map soon! Frank --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
