I came across this 1945 map in the Detroit Free Press archives and it caught my attention as both a map of the “Air Age” where airplanes would become the dominate vehicle for moving cargo around the world along with the focus of Detroit in the center.

The map encourages readers not to “brush it off as just another map.” The map is presented as an alternative to the Mercator projection which was designed as an easy map for shipping across oceans. The Air Cargo Research center was led by Spencer Larsen at Wayne State University. Floyd A. Stilgenbauer was the cartographer of this map and was based on his research on a polar lobate globoid projection system. Stilgenbauer’s name still adorns the Wayne State University GIS and Cartographer Laboratory.