About the Bonne Projection
This projection is closely associated with Rigobert Bonne after he used it extensively in his 1752 maritime atlas, but it predates this date by about a century. Some attribute the projection's invention to Apian's 1520 world map, although this was a copy of Waldseemüller's 1507 modification of Ptolemy's second projection. The Apian & Waldseemüller projection can best be described as a rudimentry Bonne projection - it has segmented meridians and the meridians bend at the equator. Sylvano's world map of 1511, and Johannes Honter's world map of 1561 are closer to the Bonne projection with meridians that are almost correctly spaced. The true Bonne projection was definitely in use by the beginning of the 18th century when De L'Isle used it for a map of Africa, and Vincenzo Maria Coronelli used it for maps of the East Indies and Australia in 1691.
The Bonne projection is a pseudo-conic projection. It becomes the Werner projection when the center is located over the pole, and the Sinusoidal projection when it is located over the equator. The parallels are plotted as concentric, equally spaced circular arcs. Compared to the Werner projection, curvature of the Bonne's central parallel is corrected, thus reducing the distortion of shapes in the temperate and tropical zones.
The Bonne projection was particularly popular in the first half of the 20th century, although it has declined in popularity in recent years. It is particularly well suited to regional and continental mapping, but shape distortion around the edges limits its use in global maps.
Author's Note: Of the projections presented here at Equal-Area-Maps.com, the Bonne projection is the visually most interesting. However, the extreme shape distortion around the edges limits its use in global maps. It also has moderate software support. It is supported by ESRI and the Proj4 library, but it is unlikely to be added to the Proj4JS library.
See our interactive Bonne Projection world map (overlays disabled due to the lack of Proj4JS support).