Used with
permission of Maiken Naylor, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA,
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/sel/exhibits/stamps
Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594) was a Flemish geographer who broke away from the Ptolemaean stranglehold on cartography in the late Middle Ages. Venerated maps with centuries-old misinformation were found to be increasingly inconsistent with recent observations by mariners of the Age of Exploration. His solution to the problem of distortion of physical features on the sphere of the earth when projected onto a flat map was the cylindrical, or Mercator, projection still in use today.