Mathematical construction of the Mercator chart (Edward Wright)
Construcción matemática de la carta de Mercator (Edward Wright)
- Date
- 1599 · confidence high
- Place
- London, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Edward Wright
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
In 'Certaine Errors in Navigation' Wright published tables of meridional parts and the mathematical explanation of the projection that Mercator had drawn empirically in 1569. It made the Mercator chart practical for pilots, who could plot courses as straight lines.
Wright derived the 'meridional parts' by summing secants; the full analytic justification came with the integral of the secant (Gregory, Barrow, 1668).
What it led to
- charts with straight-line courses
- dead-reckoning navigation with meridional-part tables
- the integral of the secant, a 17th-century precursor