Summary

We started the chapter off with a history lesson from the ancient Greeks, who began to theorize and test that the Earth was round and not, in fact, flat. With an understanding that the Earth is round, we then dove into GCSs to develop an understanding of how we represent the three-dimensional Earth in two-dimensional space. We talked about various versions of GCSs, such as WGS 1984, which has become the de facto standard GCS, given its high degree of accuracy. We also briefly spoke about the GCJ-02 GCS, which is utilized in China, and the issues it presents due to the randomized offset algorithm.

In the next section, we covered PCSs, which convert angular units, such as degrees used within GCSs, into measurements that use units, such as meters and miles. We covered multiple types of PCSs, including equal-area, conformal, equidistant, and true-direction projections. We also introduced you to the standard identifiers and authoritative sources that maintain projected coordinate...