cylindrical projection

American  

noun

1. Cartography. a map produced as if by projecting the earth's surface onto a cylinder and then unrolling it, giving it the form of a rectangle in which the top and bottom sides are the poles, the lines of latitude and longitude are straight and intersect at right angles, and lines of latitude become further apart the further they are from the equator.

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cylindrical projection Scientific  

/ sə-lĭn′drĭ-kəl /

1. A map projection in which the surface features of a globe are depicted as if projected onto a cylinder typically positioned with the globe centered horizontally inside the cylinder. In flattened form, a cylindrical projection so centered produces a rectangular map with the equator in the middle and the poles at the top and bottom. Parallels and meridians appear as straight lines that intersect each other at right angles in a grid pattern, with the meridians equally spaced and the parallels spaced progressively farther apart moving away form the equator. Distortion of shape and scale in a whole-world cylindrical projection is minimal in equatorial regions and maximal at the poles.

2. Compare azimuthal projection conic projection See illustration at Mercator projection

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Example Sentences

At the centre of the upper surface of the exhausted chamber there is a solid cylindrical projection x, to the top of which the principal lever cde is attached.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 "Banks" to "Bassoon" by Various