• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.185-191
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• 2014

With the 500th anniversary commemoration of Gerard Mercator's birth in 2012 now passed, there is the possibility that his name will fade back into obscurity. This would be both unfair and pitiful, because Gerard Mercator's name should be highly regarded as one of the principal contributors to navigational science and the promotion of marine safety. An accomplished cartographer, in 1569 Mercator published a remarkable 18-folio world map, depicting the then-known world in a new format with straight rhumb lines. While this distorted the size of land masses, particularly in higher latitudes, this new projection made navigation much easier for now all sailors had to do was to draw a straight line between two points to plot their course. Mercator clearly had this navigational benefit in mind, though his contemporaries did not immediately recognize its value. It wasn't until after Mercator's death, when Edward Wright (1599) and Henry Bond (1645) used and explained the new projection and demonstrated the use of straight rhumb lines in navigation that the Mercator projection became the standard for sea charts. Today, 450 years later of his death, electronic charts still rely on the projection Mercator invented and developed, confirming his position as a giant in the history of navigation. This paper introduces his life and work, detailing the importance of the 1569 world map and its contribution to navigational science and safety.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.236-248
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• 2016

In this review, the basic concepts of geodetic coordinate system and map projection are explained to practitioners in exploration geophysicists to enhance the understanding of geographic and projected coordinate system. The fundamental elements such as earth ellipsoid, geoid, geocentric and geodetic latitudes, rhumb line, and great circle are dealt with in detail. The geocentric and geodetic coordinate systems are also summarized neatly, together with coordinate conversion formulae. In addition, the concept and technique for datum transforms between local and world datum are presented, with special emphasis on Korean Geodetic System.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.36 no.8
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• pp.619-624
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• 2012

In 1969, Y.J. Yun wrote the terrestrial navigation text book that discussed earth sciences, aides to navigation, chart and publications, tide and tidal current, piloting, rhumb-line sailing, great circle sailing grounded on the hand-on background and theory. It has still been used as a principle text book in a lot of maritime academies and schools. And many contents and definitions came from other terrestrial navigation books published in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Japan. But some of them have caused the misunderstanding because they had no enough explanation and explained by incorrect items. In this study, we have found out the problems in the terms course and heading which are related with the direction of the vessel movement, and proposed the amended definitions in order to prevent the misunderstanding and confusion. of them.