Robinson Projections

Figure 1. The Robinson projection.

The Robinson projection was developed by Arthur H. Robinson in 1963. It was the first major map projection to be commissioned by a large private corporation; Rand McNally hired Robinson (who was a professor in the Geography Department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1945 until he retired in 1980) to develop the projection because they were not satisfied with the ability of existing projections to create intuitively appealing depictions of the entire world. Rand McNally still makes extensive use of the Robinson projection, and the National Geographic Society uses it as well (although the Society seems to be using the projection a bit less frequently now than it did in the 1980s).

Robinson called this the orthophanic projection (which means "right appearing"), but this name never caught on. In at least one reference book, this projection is termed the Pseudocylindrical Projection with Pole Line, which is highly descriptive (the "pole line" bit comes from the fact that the North and South Poles on a Robinson projection are shown as lines and not points -- see Figure 1), but so unwieldily that it is not surprising that this name also failed to gain much acceptance. Robinson projection is unquestionably the name of choice.

The Robinson projection is highly unique. Unlike all other projections, Dr. Robinson did not develop this projection by developing new geometric formulas to convert latitude and longitude coordinates from the surface of the Model of the Earth to locations on the map. Instead, Dr. Robinson used a huge number of trial-and-error computer simulations to develop a table that allows a cartographer to look up how far above or below a Robinson map's equator a particular line of latitude will be located, and then to estimate (via a simple interpolation process) where along this line a particular longitude will fall. To this day, no other projection uses this approach to build a map.