engleski

George Biddell Airy and His Contribution to Map Projections Theory

Sir George Biddell Airy was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist with a great interest in geodesy and geophysics. According to Airy's autobiography, he published 518 papers, only two out of which are associated with cartography. In the one published in 1861, Airy was the first to propose the least squared method to azimuthal projection with the least distortion ("minimum-error"). He approached the development of his projection with a goal of having a minimum "total evil" or "total misrepresentation" determined by what he called "Balance of Errors". The present paper explains Airy's method and the need to differentiate between the terms error and distortion in the map projection theory. Airy's second cartographic paper, published in 1858, is rather unknown and deals with his method of approximating a geodetic line using a circular arc on a map produced in the normal aspect Mercator projection.

George Biddell Airy ; map projection ; minimum distortion ; geodetic line

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