Globular, or curvilinear, are either general or particular.
General, are the hemispheres; for the most part constructed stereographically.
Particular, contain only some part of the terraqueous globe; and of this sort there are sundry modes of construction, which for the most part are defective, so as not to be applied with accuracy and facility to the purposes intended, in determining the courses or bearings of places, their distances, or both.
Rectilinear were therefore very early adopted, on which the meridians were described parallel to each other, and the degrees of latitude and longitude every-where equal; the rumbs were consequently right lines; and hereby it was thought, that the courses or bearings of places would be more easily determined.
But these were found also insufficient and erroneous, the meridians being parallel, which ought to converge; and no method or device used to accommodate that parallelism.
Notwithstanding the great deficiency in this plane map or chart, it was preferred, especially in nautical business; and hath its uses at this day in topographic constructions, as in bays, harbours, and very narrow zones.
However, the errors herein were sooner discovered than corrected, both by mathematicians and mariners, as by Martin Cortese, Petrus Nonius, Coigniet, and some say by Ptolemy himself.
The first step towards the improvement of this chart was made by Gerardus Mercator, who published a map about the year 1550, wherein the degrees of latitude were increased from the equator towards each pole; but upon what principles this was constructed, he did not exhibit.
About the year 1590, Mr. Edward Wright, an Englishman, discovered the true principles upon which such a chart should be constructed; and communicated the same to one Jodocus Hondius, an engraver, who, contrary to his honest faith and engagement, published the same as his own invention: This occasioned Mr. Wright, in the year 1599, to exhibit his method of construction, in his book, intitled, Correction of Errors in Navigation; in the preface of which book may be seen his charge and proof against Hondius; and also how far Mercator has any right to share in the honour due for this great improvement in geography and navigation.
Blundevill, in his Exercises, page 327, published anno 1594, gives a table of meridional parts answering to even degrees, from 1° to 80° of latitude, with the sketch of a chart constructed therefrom; but this table he acknowledged to have received from Mr. Wright, in the following words, page 326, viz. “In the mean time to reform the saide faults,” (in the plane chart) “Mercator hath in his universal chard or mappe made the spaces of the parallels of latitude to bee wider everie one than other from the equinoctial towards either of the poles, by what rule I know not, unless it be by such a table as my friend Maister Wright of Caius-college in Cambridge at my request sent me (I thank him) not long since for that purpose, which table with his consent, I have plainlie set down,” &c.