--- title: Gerardus Mercator, Inventor of Flat Map, Honored in New Google Doodle description: A new Google Doodle is honoring cartographer Gerardus Mercator, discovered how to create a flat map that uses the curvatures of the earth. canonical: https://time.com/3732985/gerardus-mercator-google-doodle-mercator-projection-cartography/ author: Kevin McSpadden article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-05T05:39:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:43:29.715Z og:title: Google Doodle Honors Inventor of Flat Map Gerardus Mercator og:description: Jailed for heresy in 1544, Mercator later revolutionized navigational theory og:url: https://time.com/3732985/gerardus-mercator-google-doodle-mercator-projection-cartography/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22d9bca78a899db0/69878235e20a87b2f2a856a9/google-doodle-gerardus-mercator-navigation.png?branch=production&width=380&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 380 og:image:height: 214 og:image:alt: Google-Doodle-Gerardus-Mercator-Navigation og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google Doodle Honors Inventor of Flat Map Gerardus Mercator twitter:description: Jailed for heresy in 1544, Mercator later revolutionized navigational theory twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22d9bca78a899db0/69878235e20a87b2f2a856a9/google-doodle-gerardus-mercator-navigation.png?branch=production&width=380&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # New Google Doodle Honors Inventor of Flat Map Gerardus Mercator > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=154d7206-23f0-432f-921e-434571469803&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [Kevin McSpadden](https://time.com/author/kevin-mcspadden/) ## Kevin McSpadden Mar 5, 2015 5:39 AM UTC  Google by [Kevin McSpadden](https://time.com/author/kevin-mcspadden/) ## Kevin McSpadden Mar 5, 2015 5:39 AM UTC To celebrate his 503rd birthday, Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, who in 1569 discovered how to create a flat map that takes into consideration the curvatures of the earth, has been honored in a new [Google Doodle](http://www.google.com/doodles/gerardus-mercators-503rd-birthday). His theory, dubbed the “Mercator projection,” was a major breakthrough for navigation because for the first time sailors could plot a route using straight lines without constantly adjusting their compass readings. However, because the projection lengthens the longitudinal parallels, the scale of objects enlarge dramatically as they near the north and south poles and the method becomes unusable at around 70 degrees north/south. Mercator was ahead of his time, not living to see his discovery become fully employed, but “by the eighteenth century the projection had been adopted almost universally by European navigators,” [TIME](http://ideas.time.com/2013/11/21/a-history-of-the-world-in-twelve-maps/slide/gerard-mercator-world-map-1569/) wrote in 2013. The cartographer was born on March 5, 1512, in the town of Rupelmonde in Flanders (today a part of Belgium). He was educated in the Netherlands and in 1544 was jailed for heresy due to his protestant faith and frequent traveling for research. He died on Dec. 2, 1594. _Read next:_ [_8 Outstanding Google Tools You Should Know About_](http://time.com/3722820/8-outstanding-google-tools/?xid=time%5Freadnext) ### See Google Doodles Through the Years  Aug. 26, 2015 For the 70th anniversary of La Tomatina. Google  May 26, 2015 In celebration of the 64th birthday of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. Google  March 31, 2015 Honoring the 126th anniversary of the public opening of the Eiffel Tower. Google  Mar. 20, 2015 To celebrate the start of spring and the vernal equinox, Google created a stop-motion animation of flowers in bloom. Google  Nov. 12, 2014 For the landing of the Philae lander, the first spacecraft on a moving comet, Google created a gyrating lander with passing stars. Google  Sept. 9, 2014 For Tolstoy's 186th birthday, the Google Doodle team created an appropriately long click-through doodle. Google  May 27, 2014 For the Rachel Louise Carson doodle, the team surrounded her with birds and sea creatures to celebrate her 107th birthday. Google  May 4 2014 For Audrey Hepburn's 85th birthday, the doodle team adapted an image from a 1956 black and white photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh. Google  June 9, 2011 The doodlers came up with the idea of a playable logo, then pegged it to guitar innovator Les Paul's 96th birthday. Turning on composer mode allows you to create songs that you can share online. Google  March 24, 2011 The Harry Houdini doodle was created in the style of the old posters advertising the death-defying magician. Google  Nov. 25, 2010 Chef Ina Garten prepared this Thanksgiving feast, which Google photographed. If you clicked on a dish, her recipe appeared. Google  May 7, 2010 Google asked the San Francisco Ballet to pose and twirl to re-create Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Google  Oct. 7, 2009 Scan the doodle that marks the first patent for the bar code and you'll decode Google embedded within. Google  March 2, 2009 The doodlers arranged classic Dr. Seuss characters, like the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch, to form the logo's letters. Google  Jan. 28, 2009 There was no other way to honor abstract artist Jackson Pollack than with a chaotic drip painting. Google  Jan. 19, 2009 Guest artist Shepard Fairey (famed for his Obama HOPE poster) did a sketch for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Google  Jan. 28, 2008 Early on, Google used Lego blocks as casing for hard disks. Later it feted Lego's 50th anniversary. Google  April 22, 2007 A melting iceberg for Earth Day is one of many eco-minded doodles the team has created. Google  Jan. 4, 2006 Enter the world of out-there doodles — Google in braille. Only problem: you can't feel it. Google  March 30, 2005 The Van Gogh doodle appeared in an era when doodles began to get more ambitious, and it's one of the doodlers' best interpretations of a specific painter. Google  Aug. 13, 2003 Early doodles of famous folk tended to be simple, like this silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock. Google  March 14, 2003 The early doodles were often simple but playful, like this mustachioed drawing of Albert Einstein to celebrate his birthday. Google  Nov. 14, 2001 Google's first doodler, Dennis Hwang, gave the logo an Impressionist look for Claude Monet's birthday. Google  Aug. 30, 1998 When employees left for the Burning Man festival, the Google logo became a cryptic BE BACK LATER sign. "There was no master plan for doodles at that point," says doodler-in-chief Ryan Germick. Google [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/?sl%5Fautoplay=true&xid=spl-fullbrief-article) ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. 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