[oldE]

Two things helped me understand the misrepresentation. First, we had a globe in our elementary school classroom (1 room, P - 6). The globe sat on the table directly in front of our row of seats. Comparing that with the Mercator projection on the wall made me aware of shortcomings in a system developed for ocean navigation. The second thing was National Geographic had published an equal area projection around the mid sixties. Perhaps because of those two things the current "revelations " about bias in the old Mercator projection system strikes me rather like someone complaining that their hammer won't cut wood.