John Paul Goode

John Paul Goude was one of the key geographers in American Geography’s Incipient Period from 1900 to 1940 (McMaster and McMaster 306). Goode was born in Stewartville, Minnesota on November 21, 1862. Goode received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota 1889 and his doctorate in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1903. Later on in 1903, he was offered a position as a professor in the Geography Department at the University of Chicago (Haas and Ward 241, 243).

Evil Mercator

In 1908, Goode spoke at an American Association of Geographers meeting in Baltimore, USA about the creating an alternative to the “Evil Mercator” (Hass and Ward 244). The Mercator projection has severe distortion at the poles and northern latitudes. Goode merged the homolographic and sinusoidal projections at 40° 44’ 11.8” N and S to make the Goode Interrupted Homolosine projection (Stienwand 1). The “homolo” coming from homolographic, and the “sine” originating from sinusoidal. He calculated the latitude where the two projections had the same scale and therefore should be merged by overlaying the two projections on each other.Above and below 40° 44’ 11.8” N and S respectively, the homolographic projection is used. Between those two latitudes the sinusoidal projection is inserted. The Interrupted Homolosine projection is a pseudo-cylindrical, equal area projection. Initially, Goode’s Homolosine projection did not have universal appeal. The...
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