"America at the center"

[mmcirvin]

I've heard in various places the claim that world maps made in the US always put the US near the center, but I don't think I've ever actually seen such a map. It seems to me that it would be awkward to split Eurasia in two, and I'd probably have noticed the oddity (this page on south-at-the-top maps mentions a correspondent having one made by the George F. Cram company, so I suppose they exist).

Most of the ones you can get here split the globe near the International Date Line, so that Europe is near the center in longitude. This is partly Western ethnocentrism (the Prime Meridian, an arbitrary British creation, is in the middle), but it's also convenient because there's not much land in the middle of the Pacific. Sometimes there's some special handling of the split near where Russia meets Alaska.

This stock photo library has some with the Americas at the center. They're weird-looking.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Some sources seem to imply that world wall maps with the Americas at the center were formerly common here.

Google Maps starts out with the US centered because it initially only covered the US and nearby parts of Canada. (But if you zoom way out, you find that they tile the world in a repeating strip, so no place is actually the center.)

My internal mental map of the world tends to regard the Pacific Rim as to the west and Europe to the east, because that's the way you go there by air from here (though, truth be known, in both cases you're primarily going over the arctic regions). Maybe people are still thinking printed maps look like that even though they rarely do.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, is it just me, or is Google Maps putting off dealing with a large and sticky localization/internationalization problem?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...The ones Cram sells now (http://www.georgefcram.com/education/l2a2.html) look to use a typical Prime-Meridian-at-the-center convention.

I'm PRETTY sure

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I grew up with America-centered Mercator-projection maps in the classrooms and my bedroom until around 1974. I also have a vague, possibly incorrect memory of being baffled for a while after that by maps with Kamchatka at the left, split between Australia and New Zealand (155° east) rather than either at 180° or between mainland Siberia and Alaska.

Re: I'm PRETTY sure

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Hmm, probably so they could get in the whole Aleutian chain without cutting off any precious American islands.

Re: I'm PRETTY sure

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Looking at those Cram school maps more closely, it looks like they actually put the central meridian at a few degrees east so that the split is between Russia and mainland Alaska.

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

When I was in Uppers 3 (aka "Fourth Grade") at the British School in Riyadh, I was told by my teacher, Mr. Richardson, that the reason Britain was in the middle of world maps was that it was the center of world industry.