Gerardus Mercator's 1569 world map introduced the Mercator projection, a cylindrical conformal projection that became the standard for nautical navigation. The projection preserves angles and shapes at the cost of distorting sizes, making Greenland appear as large as Africa. Despite this limitation, its ability to represent constant compass bearings as straight lines made it invaluable for ocean navigation. The Mercator projection remains widely used today in web mapping services like Google Maps.