Time Line
1541
Mercator presented a globe.
1569
Mercator prepares a large map of Europe.
1570
Abraham Ortelius prepares an atlas, 'Theatrum orbis terrarum'.
1571
RajaTodarmal, one of the nine jewels of Akbar, introduces a rational revenue assessment system based on properply-surveyed holdings.
1578
Mercator prepares an edition of Ptolemy's world atlas.
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Mercator
Gerhard Mercator, a maker of mathematical and astronomical instruments, owed much to his relations with Gemma Phrysius, the cosmographer and editor of Peter Apian. He acquired a profound knowledge of cosmography and of topographical progress in Europe and beyond, and won general recognition as the most learned geographer of his day. On his globe of 1541, were laid down, for the first time, loxodromes (constant bearings). Before the appearance of his famous world map in 1569, Mercator achieved international reputation as a cartographer, principally through his map of Europe of 1554, which displayed critical ability of a high order. His posthumous fame rests upon his world map published at Duisberg in 1569. Mercator, using conformal projection in his chart showing ‘waxing latitudes’, made an effort to represent the land surfaces as accurately as possible, and to show how much of the earth’s surface was known to the ancients. But the theoretical construction of the projection was not clearly set out until Edward Wright published his ‘Certaine Errors in Navigation’ in 1599. In his outlines of the continents, Mercator broke away completely from the conceptions of Ptolemy, though the latter’s influence in the interior of the Old World can still be traced. He recognised three great landmasses, the old world (Eurasia and Africa), the New Indies (North and South America) and a great southern continent, ‘Continens Australis’. His concept of the existence of a continent in the southern part as a counterpart of the ‘inhabited world’, was derived ultimately from the Greeks. In 1595, a year after his death, his heirs published the complete work with a general title page, Atlas sive cosmographicae meditation de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura. This was the first time the term atlas was applied to a collection of maps.
Land surveying and map-making, an integral part of any government, was pioneered in India by Todarmal who was employed in military operations in Akbar’s empire. In 1567, Todarmal, along with Muzaffar Khan effected a major change in the revenue collection procedure. A new procedure for collecting information about the area of land - cultivated and uncultivated, produce of the land and the land revenue figures or statistics was implemented. In popular memory, the ‘Dahsala’ or 10 yearly revenue system is associated with Todarmal who, along with ‘Diwan’ Shah Mansur, divided the empire into 12 provinces, each with a governor and a ‘Diwan’. Sher Shah Suri’s revenue maps based on regular land surveying system also proves the development of mapping techniques in the medieval period
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