Transverse Mercator projection (Gauss-Krüger) and the UTM system
Proyección transversa de Mercator (Gauss-Krüger) y sistema UTM
- Date
- 1822 (Gauss); 1912 (Krüger); 1947 (UTM) · confidence high
- Place
- Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany
- Credited to
- Carl Friedrich Gauss, Louis Krüger and the US Army (UTM)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A conformal projection that wraps Mercator's cylinder along a meridian so that narrow north-south strips are shown with little distortion. Divided into sixty zones, it underlies topographic maps and the UTM coordinates used by military and civilians.
Lambert had described the transverse projection in 1772; Gauss worked it out in 1822-1825 for the Hanover survey and Krüger developed it in 1912. The UTM system was adopted around 1947.
What it led to
- metric coordinate grids for topographic maps and GIS
- use in GPS receivers and cadastral mapping