Mapping Hacks

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Chapter 3, Mapping Your World

#31 Plot Dymaxion Maps in Perl

HACK

See Also

• “Experiment with Different Cartographic Projections” [Hack #28]

• “Plot Arbitrary Points on a World Map” [Hack #29]

• “Calculate the Distance Between Points on the Earth’s Surface” [Hack #27]

HACK

#31

Plot Dymaxion Maps in Perl Hack #31

See Earth’s surface as one world in one ocean, just as Bucky Fuller intended.

Any projection of Earth’s surface onto a flat plane necessarily introduces dis-

tortions of one kind or another. “Experiment with Different Cartographic

Projections”

[Hack #28] discusses the most common sorts of trade-offs that car-

tographic projections typically make in trying to preserve the area, shape, or

relative locations of Earth’s landmasses. However, cartographic projections

can emphasize other aspects of the world’s surface, as well.

Toward the end of “a precise means for seeing the world from the dynamic,

cosmic and comprehensive viewpoint,” R. Buckminster Fuller labored for

decades to invent the Dymaxion projection, which projects Earth’s spheroid

onto an icosahedron aligned in such a way that 18 of its 20 triangular faces

can be unwrapped onto a flat plane without splitting landmasses. The other

two faces artfully split the Yellow Sea and the Indian Ocean. Across each

individual face, distortion is relatively slight, so that the world is shown as

“one island in one ocean,” with the shapes and areas ...