The Ogden standard-examiner. [volume], March 05, 1922, MAGAZINE SECTION, Image 26

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H THE OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH5;Jg22;J Ml
iiil
I S ice P 3 i I
I
Fl ft SS ' ' '-' New Flattened
H " ttH ? f'U' " Noteits Striking Resemblance
I the Globe mb' , 7- ,V lolhphRealBfrllyv!t!r I1'
I JB
MaDDing WiS Ac tual Gores of Globe
H Ifiupi5 lltaSBb Peeled Off and Laid Over it. fj
WorWanJ fc?- , rft V
Provine the Old Charts ;'HLl lillU't: : 4
By Henry Smith Williams, M. D., LL. D.
WTHEN you see B. J. S. CahUl, the
X California architect, take in hand
an ordinary ruhber ball on which
outlines of the continents have been
drawn, making it like a school globe, your
mind reverts to the geography class of
your school days. You recall with what
difficulty you grasped the Idea that this
flat-seeming world on which we live is
really "round like a ball" , and how hard it
was for you to associate the. map on me
globe with the flat map in your geography
You recall, too, tnat when you compare
I the map on the globe and the one In the
booV, you found them very different
North America, for example, on the globe
cuts rather a prarx-ful flpure. with a mod
est, birdlike head representing Alaska;
whereas on the world-map this same con
tlnent is a top-heavy affair, with Alaska
showing as a relatively gigantic bullhead.
To this day you rrobably have not a
very clear idea as to what Is the actual
shape of our continent and what are the
true relative uns of ilie L'ui'n il
H States, the Dominion of Canada and
Alaska And it is fairly certain that you
have an utterly mistaken notion of the
H' magnitude of Greenland and Iceland and
Hj Spitzbergen and of the Scandinavian
H Peninsula and the northern portion of the
Continent of Asia.
But when Mr. Cahlll, holding the rubber
globe in his hand, makes a few incisions in
it with his knife, and then spreads the
globe out and flattens it under the glass of
tin ordinary photographic printing frame,
Hj you perceive something which reminds ou
of 'he old geography days, only by contrast
H; For now the map on the rubber globe has
become a flat map, and you behold all the
countries of the world at a sinele glanee,
as you never beheld them before, undis
torlod in shape and of i-he right relative
H size. The transformed globo is spread uut
'before ou as a map with four wings, giv
ing it a shape wht"h at once suggests tbo
propr'ety of the name Its inventor has
given it the Butterfly Map
H' . ;d after ou get over marvelling, you
ex in: "How extremely simple. 1 won
de: that I never thought of that "
But you need not wonder Simple
Hj things are not easy to think of. The most
H ingenious inventor usually develops com-
Hi plex mechanisms before he hits on ultl-
mate simplicity of design And Mr Cahlll
H! himself devoted a large part of his leisure
Hj time for twelve lor ig : to tlie study of
DQ ipmaking, and had slowly evolved his
now famous Butterfly Map, before the
Mr. Cahlll, his reading thus rudely inter-
An Old "Map" of the Heavens and Earth as Conceived by
Sebastien Munster in 1550.
rupted, rubbed hi forehead) Klanrcd down
and saw the ball lying there on the map
and had his inspiration.
He caught up the bull, seized a pen and
rapidly drew a crude outline of the con
tinents on Ihc rubber surface; then dis
regarding the protests of the owner of the
ball he sliced into the rubber with the
blade of a safety razor and spread it out
And behold! He had duplicated the But
terfly Map of the newspaper. The rubber
globe had become a Butterfly Map Hetter
BtlU, when be took his hand away, the
rubber, retaining lt3 elasticity, sprang
HI
back into shape, and became n globe apaln.
And now he saw that he had a device
which linked globe and map in a way to
command the attention of any school
child, removing tho last elemont of mysti
fication. To understand just how important Mr.
CahiU's now map is. nothing more Is
necessary than to make a comparison be
tween it and the world maps hitherto
available in our geographies and ntlases.
If you will consult the first world atlas that
comes to hand, the chances aie that you
Will find tiiat il shows tho Mercator pro-
LL 1 1 1 1 j
;
Mr. Cahill Demonstrating His Butterfly Map with a Globe Cut
(;1 Open and Ready to Be Laid Flat.
lectloil That is the world map which we
all studied at school, as our ancestors had
done for tho past three hundred yeurs or
more. Comparing It with Mr Cahlll'S
Butterfly Map (which gives tho true pro
portions), you will see what a weirdly dis
torted picture It gles of the continents.
North America, for example, as you see
it on this map. Is as much a monstrosity as
a picture of a man with a full sized lion's
head on his body. It makes one think of
those snapshots that you sometimes see
in which a mammoth hand or a foot, all
out of proportion, is projecting toward the
camera Alaska is shown an a gigantic
territory, like a great head which makes
the other part of the body represented by
the I'nlted Slates and Mexico, seem puny.
And Greenland is a mammoth continent,
apparently larger than South Amei ica. The
real Alaska and tho real Greenland are
mere dwarfs in comparison.
Those distortions are necessary results
of Mercator'B plan, which, whatever Its
merits, involves fundamental absurdities.
Tho difficulty is that the small polar re
gions are spread out Just as wide as the
equatorial region. The polo is, of course,
an imaginary point, occupying no space at
all; but in the map it is spread out to cover
an east and west expanse equivalent to
that of the equator. If a polar bear were
standing just at the pole, and were do
Dieted on the Mercator projection, he
would extend right across the page a
beast twenty-four thousand miles lon.
- . '-
.t could not be otherwise because the J
location of any and every point is charted H
with referenco to meridians of longitude V
which are actually drawn as parallel lines
on the map. whereas in reality they are kj
Imaginary lines which steadily converge
on the way from the equator to the pole, 'J
finally coming together at the polo itself!
At the equator the successive meridian
lines, each representing a degree of the I
earth's circumference, are a little over
sixty-nine miles apart. Lp toward tho I
north, about ninety miles from the pole,
these same lines are only ono mile apar! i
Travelling straight east or straight west
.at this latitude, you would find the distance
around the globe only 360 miles.
Even if you go no farther North than
Alaska, which lies mostly between the
sixtieth and seventieth parallels of lati
tude. theVonverging lines of longitude are
only about sixteen miles apart, so every
mile of actual Alaskan territory becomes
four miles or so on the map, and tho terri
tory as n whole Is made faiily to rival tho
entire bulk of our fifty States, from Maine fl
to California, though in reality you could 1
flrop (lie wholo of Alaska into the Missis- I
Rlppl basin and have plenty of outstanding
1 1 rrltory b
All of this, of course, represents no new
discovery. Mercator himself was perfectly
aware of the inherent defects of his plan
of map making Ile felt merely tliat its
advantages more than balanced the de
fecta; and succeeding generations of peo-
rraphers have agreed with him Never
- lesa many efforts have been made to
improve upon his plan. But it can hardlv I
I 0 -aid that any one of thosp was slenallv I
successful until Mr. Cnhill hit upon the I
novel plan of the Butterfly Man which f
shows things as they are. j