MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW Editor, W. J. HUMPHREYS . ~~ -~ ~ ~ ._ __ -__- VOL. 61, No. 7 CLOSEDSEPTEMBER 5, 1933 W. B. No. 1109 JULY 1933 ISSUEDOctober 13, 1933

___-__ ~~~ ~___ -~~ ~___ ~ - ~__~- AMERICAN PIONEERS IN METEOROLOGY By ERICR. MILLER [Weather Bureai~Office, hIadimn, Xi-, June 19.331 Pioneer weather ob.sercers.-The early colonist,s found Another Revolutiounry soldier whosc hobby of weather the weather and climate of this continent a source of observing led to the establishment of a weather qervice, interest, and sometimes of surprise. The educated re- was Siiiieon Dewitt,, successively chief topogr:tphicnl en- corded t,he weather in their dkries and included it in their gineer on the staff of General Washington, surveyor letters to the old country. One of these diarist,s, the general of the Sttite of New Yorlr, and vice chancellor of Rev. John Campmius, of New Swden, is acclaimed the University of the State of New Torlr. In the latter “first dnierican weather observer ” by Marc.us Benjamin capacity, he organized ineteorologicnl observations at the in the chapter on nieteorology of t8hejubilee volume of academics throughout the State, whirl1 continued from the Sniithsonian Institfution, 1896. The diary kept, by 1825 to 1863. This bureau performed nokworthy sxvice Campanius for the years 1644-45 at a fort near the. pre.- in designing and testinginstruments (the DeWitt rain :age sent site of Wilmington, Del., was published by his w:is adopted by the Sniithsoninn metcoro1opic:d y-stcin), grandson. Ver.y few of such noninstrument,nl records uncl in training men like Joseph Henry, nnd Jtimes H. have been published in this country, although, its Hell- Coffin to do meteorologicnl work. mann has shown, much can be gleaned froin them. Discozyery oj the law of stoms iind inrantion of the Instruments for the quantitntive measurement of the weather mcip.-One of those rare outbursts of intense ac- weather elements were rare in colonial times. The first tivity in research nnd discovery that bring more progress w-ere imported by Dr. John Lining, an eminent physician in a decade than had occurred in the preceding niilleniuin who migrated from Scotland to Charle,st,on, S.C. in 1730. was going on in meteorology just a century ngo. He imported n barometer, thermonieters, hygrometer, One circumstance that stimulated progress here at and rain gage, and undertook systematic tridaily obser- that time was the beginning of the publication in this vations to ascertain the influence of atniospheric. condi- country of scientific journals. Aside from the Transac- tions on the human body, and upon the incidence. of tioiis of the American Philosophical Society (177 1) the epidenlic diseases. The history of these ea.rly observers first of these was the American Journnl of Science, founded has been written by He,nry,2 McAdie,3 Vnrney,‘ and by Benjamin Silliman of Yale in 1818, nest the Journnl Abbe,6 and their records have been collected and sum- of the Franklin Institute in 1836, and then the Proceedings marized by Schott.e of the American Philosophical Society in 1840. Founders of early weather ser~~ices.-Hygienic cliinn- The formative period of American m t,ology was the object of the first American weather been well sketched by the eminent m:ithematici~n service, t,hnt of the Army Medical Department, founded Masiine BBcher, and I quote from his paper “The 1514, by an unobtrusive clause in the regulations issued Meteorological Labors of Dove, Redfield, and Espy ” by James Tilton, p1igsicia.n and Surgeon-General, Revo- (Ani. hlet’l Jol. 5, 1888, 1-13): lutionary Was veteran, and member of the Continentd “The subjects which occupied the minds of nieteor- Congress. The effect of this initiation of met,eorologicnl ologists at the time to the exclusion of everything. else work was not important until the Army was expnnded by was the theory of storms, both of wind and of rain, a John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, to bring the Middle region in which they found the paths :IS pet almost un- West and the Louisiana Purchase under the cont(ro1of trodden. The preceding meteorologists had done some the Government. Then the meteorolo icnl service began valuable work, of which the most importnnt was perhaps a march with the frontier t8hatu1t)imate 7y carrkd it, across Hadley’s (George Hadley, Concerning the Cause of the the continent, and thus afforded us the first outlines of General Trade Winds, Phil. Trans. Vol. 39, pp. 5s-63, the climate of the country as a whole. 1735) partially correct explanation of the trade winds of the Torrid Zone [partially because he assumed the velocity 1 Presented at the meeting of the American Meteorological Society at the Century of Progress Exposition Chicago June 1933. of the air around the axis of the enrth to remain constant * Henry, A. J. Ea& indivihual ohserrers in the United States. W.B. Bull. 11, 1893, 31-30?, with change of latitude, except as affected by friction a Mcbdie, A. Simultaneous meteorological observations in the United States during with the surface of the earth, instead of inversely pro- the 18th century. W.B. Bull. 11 1893 303-30.1. 4 Varney, B. M. Early metedrolo& at Harvard College, Mo. Wes. Rev. rol. 36, portional to its distance from that axis, as it tends to be 1908. 140-142, 286-290. sAhbe, C. Chronologlcal outline of the history of meteorology In the United States, in accordance with the law of the conservation of areas. Mo. Wea. Rev. vol. 37 leOg 87-89. Also he neglected-it was not then known-the equal 8 Schott, C. A. Tabies an’d results of the precipitation in rain and snow in the United States and at some stations in the adjacent parts of North America and in Central and tendency of the air to deflect from its course whatever South America. Smithsonian Contr. to Know. 1st Ed. 18’12, ?d ed. no. 353. 1881. Tables. distribution and variations of the atmospheric temperature in the United States its horizontal direction.] They had not even n correct and some adjacent parts of America. Smithsonian Contrib. to Know. no. 2ii, 1678. understanding of the motions of the atmosphere in a 10477-33-1 189

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/26/21 06:25 PM UTC 190 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW JULY 1933 storm, much less could they explain them. In regard to destroyed and the cloud will continue to ascend so long as rainstorms, however, there was one plausible theory, its temperature is greater than that of the surrounding that of Hutton (James Hutton, 1726-97, Theory of air.” Espy argued that “as this air rises other air will Rain Edin. Trans. 1, 1788) who had shown that when rush in from all sides to take its place, and this in turn two masses of air at different temperatures are mixed will rise, thus forming what Espy calls a vortex, near together, a portion of their moisture may be precipitated, whose center there will usually be rain, and toward whose so that tlie meeting of a warm and a cold wind would be center the wind will blow. Moreover Espy’s theory the cause of a rainstorm. With the exception of this, esplained not only a windstorm with a rainy center, but we may fairly say that nothing was known about storms also a liailstorni when the raindrops carried upward until except that a northeast gale on our coast ‘backs up’ congealed are thrown out at one side, and waterspouts against tlie wind. (C.f. W. M. Davis, Was Lewis Evans and landspou t3, wllich are nierely sinal1 vortices of or Benjamin Franklin the First to Recognize that Our unusual violence which reach down to the ground with Northeast Storms Come from the Southwest? Proc. their accompanying cloud, and lastly but most important An:. Phil. SOC.45, 1906, 129-130.) of all, the diriiinution of barometric pressure at the center ‘‘In 1821, William C. Redfield, a mechanic (saddler) of storms, for we have here a column of relatively warm by trade with only a common-school educntion, had and consequently light air.” occasion to go from his home in Connecticut to the Redfield, as early as 1834, espressed the opinion that western part of Massachusetts, over the very region which the typhoons of the China Sea were similar to West a few months before had been swept by a violent Sep- Indian hurricanes; that the storms of the Southern tember gale. The wind had left its record in the fallen Henlisphere would be found to rotate in the opposite trees, and as Redfield advanced and found the trees direction to those of the Northern Hemisphere, and to lying in the opposite direction to those near his home, it follow paths recurving in the opposite direction from the flashed upon him that the gale was a whirlwind on a Equator; all of which were found to be true a few years large scale which advanced over the country from south- later when the facts were investigated. west to northeast, while at the sanie time it whirled Redfield was fortunate in lis proselytes. The first of around its axis in a direction opposite to that in which these was Lt. Col. William Reid (1791-1S58) who had the hands of a watch move. This was Redfield’s great won reputation in Spain under Wellington. Reid came discovery. However, he was a diffident young man, and out to Barbndoes as governor in 1S31 just after that island it was only through a chance meeting with Prof. Olnisted had been devastated by a hurricane. Redfield’s first of Yale, that he was induced to write an account of his paper came into his hands at that time, with the result theory of stornis. It was not until the year 1831 that he that he entered into correspondence with Redfield (three was able to publish his first meteorological paper, Re- volumes of which are said by Reid’s biographer to be in marks on the Prevailing Storms of the Atlantic Coast and Tale University), and devoted many years to the study of the Northeastern States (Am.J.Sci. 20, 1831, 1-36). of tropical storms, and the foriiiulation of the “law of This article is devoted in great part to the storm of 10 storins” to enable seamen to escape destruction. After years before and contains a considerable number of in- returning. to England, Reid had the East India Co. assign dependent observations extending over all our Atlantic to Captain H. Piddington, curator of a niuseum in Cal- coast. He thus puts his whirlwind theory on a firm cutta (1797-1858) the duty of studying the storms of the foundation and also makes his second great discovery, Indian seas. Piddington coined the word “cyclone” and that these storms move, roughly, in a parabolic path. in 1548 published that popular treatise on maritime These two important principles are here established meteorology, “ The sailor’s hornbook of storms in all parts independent of any theory.” of the world. ” This torch of research was handed on to “However decisive the array of facts brought forth in the island of Mauritius, where Thom and Meldrum these early papers may appear to us, it seems to have worked out the peculiarities of the cyclones of the South been very far from carrj-ing conviction to the minds of Indian Ocean. several conteiiiporar meteorologists. Of these the most Espy also built up a more local circle of collaborators. notable WRS Espy ( ames Pollard Espy, 1785-1860) who The American Philosophical Society and the Franklin from this time forthP appears as the persistent opponent Institute supported a joint committee of influential men, of Redfield both as to facts and theory.” Neither Red- of which Espy, and later Dr. Dunglison, was chairman. field nor Espy was aware of “Hadley’s principle” of the This committee in 1834 organized a net of observing sta- deflective effect of the earth’s rotation. Espy, who was tions covering the Atlantic and Gulf States, and the Ohio well grounded in the physics of llis day, could not admit Valley from Canada to Louisiana, and began collecting the rotation observed by Redfield because he knew of no data and mapping storms. The committee obtained a force capable of producing it, but insisted that the wind grant of $4,000 from the Pennsylvania legislature in 1837 always blows inward from the edge of the storm to n to be espended in equipping one observe! in each county central point or line. Espy’s contributions to meteor- of the State with a barometer, two ordmary thermom- ology were chiefly the theory of convection and the ther- eters and a self-registering theremometer, ftnd a rain-gage. modynamics of moist air in vertical motion. As early as Espy went to Europe m 1840 to esplani his theoiy of 1S28, Espy had seen the importance of water vapor, but storms. His address before the British association M-RS it was not until 1836 that he first made known his theory discussed by Sir John Herschel and Sir David Brewster, of storms in some papers published in the Journal of the and published in the report of the association for 1840. Franklin Institute. As there stated his theory is as In France he met a most enthusiastic reception. Intro- follows: “When a portion of transparent vapor in the air ducing him to the Academy of Science, Arago placed Espy is condensed into cloud or water, the latent caloric given on a par with Newton. His “Brief outline of the theory out expands it six times as much as it is contracted by of storms” was commended by the academy and pub- the condensation of vapor into water” so that “the lished in the Comptes Rendus, 1841, p. 454. Coincident moment a portion of vapor begins to condense into cloud, with his return to Boston, Espy’s “Philosophy of Storms” the air in which it is contained begins to espand, and con- came from the press. This is an elaborate presentation sequently if an equilibrium existed before, it is now of his theories, supported by numerous instances, with

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/26/21 06:25 PM UTC JULY1933 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW 191 applications to the explanation of many atmospheric of views between Dove, Redfield and Espy, without phenomena. In later years, it has been undeservedly unseemly discussion as to who should have the honor of neglected, with the result that others have received credit priority. for discoveries that had already been made by Espy, e.g. The work of these men brought into being the science the Koe.ppen-Espy theory of the daily ma.rch of wind of meteorology, as yet wholly qualitative, but capable of velocity (cf. “Philosophy of Storms,” p. siv). supporting a commercially valuable art, that of predicting Elias Loomis (181 1-89) followed with great, interest the storms. deba.te between Redfield and Espy, whic,h was at it8sheight The founding of national weather-jorecasting 8eruices.- in the years between his graduation from Yale in 1830 and Of all these early meteorologists, Espy was most keenly e,ntrance on his professorship of niatheiiiat,ics and physics alive to the possibility of practical applications. Immedi- at Western Reserve College nea.r Cleveland, Ohio, in 1836. ately after lis return from France in 1841, lie proceeded to He wa,s allowed to spend the first year of t,liis professor- Washington with aplan for the establishment of a national ship, 1836-37, in Paris where he atstended the lect,ures of weather service. The records of Congress show that he Biot, Poisson, Arago, Dulong, Pouillet, and others. enlisted the support of some of the ablest statemen of After his return to the States, in addition t80his teaching, that day, but the public was so tas-conscious that the he carried on original re,se.arch in t,errestrial magnetism, most that was dared was to provide an irregular conipcn- the aurora borealis, and meteorology, and set up and made sation for Espy by Rdding a last-moment nniendnieiit to important observations with astronomical, magnetic, and one appropriation bill or another at session after session meteorological instruments, which he had bought in until the year before his dent11 in ISGO. Europe. In studying all t8hecircumsta.nces of a t,ornado, John Quiiicy Adams, a Member of the House (after his Loomis was led to ’the discussion of t,wo storms of great term as President of the United States) and well known exte,nt t,hat occurred in 1836 and 1842, in pape,rs rend for his interest in science-he had tried to secure an appro- before the American Phi1osophica.l Society at Philadel- priation for the five meteorological and magnetic observa- phia. The second of these papers c,reat,ed 2% great, sensa- tories asked by Sabine in 1539 in cooperation with the tion, because it published the first synoptic weather map Antarctic Expedition of James Clark ROSS,and was chair- of isobars and isotherms. A sketc.h of the vertical move- nian of the Smithson bequest committee-says of Espy, ments at, the squall front, t’lirtt appears in this paper, (Memoirs, vol. 11 p. 52): antkipates modern views with re.markable accurcic.y. (January 6, 1842) “Rlr. Espy, the storm breeder, who Loomis in 1868 published his well-known testbook on had notified me at Boston that he would be here at the mete,orology, and after the beginning of the Signal Corps beginning of the year, punctual to his time, appeared meteorological work, Loomis presented 18 ‘‘ Contrihut,ions yesterday at the House, and requested me to fk a time t80meteorology ” to as many successive semiannual me.et- for an interview. I appointed him 9 o’clock this morning. ings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which were He left with nie a paper exposing his three wishes of appro- brought toget,her and discussed facts about t,he cycJones priations by Congress for his benefit-about as rational as and anticyclones of the ent,ire globe., a.nd matters wgarding those of Hans Carve1 and his wife. The man is methocli- the distribution of rain. cally monomaniac, and the dimensions of his organ of Paralleling, and in some cases antedating, the develop- self-esteem have been swollen to the size of a goiter by a ment of meteorologica.1theory in America, attacks on the report of a committee of the National Institute of France same problems were going on in other parts of the world. endorsing all of his crackbrained discoveries in meteor- For example, Capper, in 1801, inferred that the tropical ology. I told him with all possible civility that it would storms of the Coromandel coast of India were “wlirl- be of no use to memorialize the House of Representatives winds whose diameter cannot be more than 120 miles” in behalf of his three wishes. He said that he had thought (“Observations on winds and monsoons”) Romnie of addressing the Senate, and asked if they should pass n (L‘Tableauxdes vents, des niarhes et des courans”), 1806, bill in his favor whether I would support it in the House. describes a typhoon of the Gulf of Tonkin as a “tour- I said that if the Senate should pass such a bill I would billon”, and H. W. Brandes (1777-1834), then professor of do all that I could for him in the House.” mathematics at Breslau, lat,er of physics at Leipzig, (January 19, 1842) “Meeting of the select Committee began in 1817 a study of the weather of each day of the of the Sniithsonian Bequest. Habersham presented a year 1783, in which he prepared 365 charts with lines of letter from James P. Espy, proposing that a portion of the equal deviation of the pressure from the normal, and fund should be appropriated for simultaneous meteor- arrows to show the direc.tion of the wind. Unfortunat,ely ological observations all over the Union, with him for none of these charts were published, but Hildebrandsson central national meteorologist stationed at Washington has reconstructed one of them from the same data. with a comfortable salary.” H. W. Dove (1803-79), although 20 years younger than Although frustrated in his plan for a national weather Redfield or Espy, bega.n to write before either of them service, Espy had positions in the Surgeon General’s and continued unt,il his death in 1879. His doctor’s office and in the Navy Department, where he had the use thesis “Ueber barometrische Minima” (Pogg. Ann. 13, of reports from military posts and from ships, in addition 1828, 596), announces his theory of storms, which he to the corps of volunteer civilian observers that he had connects with Hadley’s theory of the trade winds by organized at Philadelphia in 1834. From these he pre- supposing that in the temperate and polar zones, polar pared four reports on meteorology, summarizing the laws and equatorial winds are placed side by side, instead of of storms and illustrating by maps and graphs the over one another as in the torrid zone. This part of progress of storms across the country. Adams refers to Dove’s theory, which BBcher, 45 years ago, spoke of as this work (vol. 11, p. 506, Februaly 8, 1844) “Mr. Espy, exploded, is identical with the scheme of atmospheric the storm breeder, came with a complaint that the Com- circulation shown in the frontispiece to Hobb’s “Glacial mittee on Ways and Means were about to retrench the Anticyclones” 1926, and is not very different from the appropriation for some small interloping office under the modern polar-front theory. There was active intemhange War Department with which he has been allowed for the

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/26/21 06:25 PM UTC 192 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW JULY 1933 last 2 years to pursue the study of storms. He said sional documents show that Paine was stimulated to this that he had contemporaneous observations made at a action by a petition written by Increase A. Lapham, a hundred and fifty military stations, the results of which naturalist living in Milwaukee, Wis. This petition recited he had reported to the Secretary of War, and his report statistics of marine disasters on the Great Lakes, and had been communicated with that of the Secretary, pointed to the feasibility of storm warnings on the basis accompanying the President’s message; and he showed of Espy’s findings, and the experience of Leverrier in me 90 engraved maps on which were marked the France. Paine was peculiarly susceptible to this appeal direction of all of the storms at the several stations of inasmuch as he had been one of Loomis’s students at observation, all confirmative of his theory.” Matthew Western Reserve College 25 years before. Laphnm had Fontaine Maury (1806-73), assigned in charge of the been observer for both Espy and Henry, and was stirred Depot of Charts, U.S.N., on July 1, 1842, reverted to the to action at this time by the success of Cleveland Abbe, subject of ocean currents, in which Benjamin Franklin who demonstrated weather mapping at Cincinnati with had achieved both scientific and practical results. the aid of local newspapers and the Western Union Tele- Maury’s work in collecting half a million observations of graph Co., in a trial beginning September 1, 1869. winds and currents from the logs of ships and sum- The work of building up the new meteorological marizing them for the benefit of mariners fell, oppor- organization fell upon Chief Signal Officer Albert J. tunely, in the clipper-ship period, and brought him Myer, formerly an Army surgeon, who had invented the numerous medals, orders of nobility, and a $5,000 service now-familinr wigwag signals with flags and torches to of silver. His Physical Georgraphy of the Sea went replace couriers as a means of military communication. through 30 editions in half a dozen lnngunges. He Myer undertook the new work with unbounded energy brought about the international conference on maritime and ambition. He trained observers, arranged telegraph meteorology at Brussels in 1853. circuits, equipped stations, and began operations within Means of rapid communication, lacking when Espy 9 months after the enactment of the Paine bill. The appeared before Congress in 1842, were provided by success of the work was immediate. Within 2 years the Morse and Vnil in 1S44. By 1846, the telegraph net had demands of the public had added “prediction of the spread so far that Redfield pointed out that it was now weather for the benefit of commerce nnd agriculture”, the practicable to give warning by telegraph of the approach gaging of rivers and the forecasting of floods. The of West Indian hurricanes. (Am.J.Sci. 2d ser., vol. 2., collection of marine intelligence, which had fallen into 1846, p. 334.) abeyance after Mnury threw in his lot with tlie Con- Joseph Henry, who had been in close touch with the federacy, wns revived by General Myer. The financial meteorolog.ical work at Philadelphia from his nearby panic of 1873 tied up the funds of the Smithsonian Institu- post at Phceton, became secretiry nnd director of t1;e tion, then in a private bank, and compelled Henry to Sniithsonian Institution when it was founded in l84G. ofler the Smithsonian meteorological system to Myer. An important place in his program was found for meteor- The transfer occurred in 1874, and included the meteoro- ological work, and he enlisted the aid of Espy and logical work of the Medical Department of the Army. Loomis in persuading the regents to his point of view. In addition to these routine duties, Myer, as member of A corps of 150 observers, incorporating Espy’s corre- the International Congress of Meteorology at Vienna in spondents was equipped and began observing in 1849. 1873, .persuaded the representatives of other nations to Eventually these were increased to over 500. Telegraphic join in international simultaneous observations, the observations were talked of from the first, but were not mapping and publication of which fell to the United actuully collected until 1857. Esperimen ts were then States. Abbe calls this (‘the finest piece of international made in weather forecasting (Henry, J., “Application cooperation in scientific work that the world has ever of telegrnph to prediction of changes of weather” Proc. seen.” Am. Ac. of Arts and Sci. 4,1857-60,271-275). Meantime, In June 1871 Myer took over the niountain observatory in 1855, Leverrier took advantage of the need demon- that had been established on Mount Washington by strated by the loss of the supply fleet of the Allies in the Hitchcock, of the New Hampshire Geological Survey, 6 Ciiniean War in a great storm in the Black Sea, to pro- months earlier. In 1873 observatories were set up on cure from the Emperor of the French means sufficient for Mount Mitchell, N.C., and Pikes Peak, Colo. The first a magnificcnt weather service that began operations on and last of these mountain observatories were continued February 17, 1855, extended over Europe in 1857, and for many years, and contributed valuable information published dnily weather charts, beginning September 10, about the meteorology of the upper air. Myer also 1863. cooperated with several polar explorers by detailing Henry renewed his demonstrations of weather teleg- trained meteorologists to accompany them. raphy in 1861 and 1862, but in spite of the great need Pioneers in dynamical meteorology.-No mathematics for weather information in the movement of armies and more advanced than arithmetic was invoked in the planning of battles, was not able to get support for the theoretical meteorology of Halley, Hadley, Dove, Red- service that he proposed. When Leverrier’s maps began field, Espy, and Loomis, nor in the applied meteorology to arrive, and news came of the creation of weather fore- of Leverrier and Myer. This is the more remarkable casting services in every European country, including inasmuch as the science of mechanics, founded in the Turkey, Henry redoubled the fervor of his appeals, but sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Galileo (1546-1642), neither the six influential members of Congress on the Kepler (1571-1630), and Newton (1642-1727)) had been board of regents of the Smithsonian Institution, nor brought to perfection as a mathematical science by Euler any other legislator would place his recommendations (1707-83)) d’Alembert (171 7-83), Lagrange (1736-181 3), before Congress. and Laplace (1749-1827) in the eighteenth century. The present United States Weather Bureau was created The relation of wind to pressure, and the deflective by legislation put through Congress by Gen. Halbert E. effect of the earth’s rotation were expressed in their final Paine, Representative from the Milwaukee district, and analytical form as early as 1835 by G. G. Coriolis (1792- signed by the President on February 9, 1870, Congres- 1843) director of studies in the fkole Polytechnique, one

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/26/21 06:25 PM UTC JULY 1933 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW 193 of the two French government schools (the other beinq but Marcel Brillouin, of the kcole Normale SupBrieure, the &ole Normale Supkrieure) which lend the world in who reproduced Ferrel’s papers in his “ MBmoires ori+ mathematical physics. (Coriolis, (‘Sur la maniere cl’6ta- naux sur la circulation g6n6rale de 1’atniosphBre’’says in blir les differens principes de niecanique pour des svst8:iies his introduction, p. vii, “one cannot sufficiently admire de corps en les consic!hmnt comme des assemb1a:es cle this collection of Ferrel’s memoirs ; in the riqor of reasoning niol6cules” Paris, J. Ecole Poly., 15, 1S35, 93-125 ancl as well as in the subtlety of ideas, the student of Nash- “Sur les Qquationsdu mouvement relntif des syst&mesde ville is a worthy predecessor of von Helmholtz.” corps,” same p. 142-154) Poisson applied the theory of Sir Napier Shaw points out that meteorological theory the deflective effect of the earth’s rotation to the motion lins been invariably hnmperecl by want of facts. All the of projectiles in the very yenr (1587) that Looniis nt- work on clvnnniical meteor dssy before Helmholtz he tended his lectures, that is to my, at the momeiit when regards as “intere;tin= speculnti NH nb3ut a planet which this principle if known, woulcl have resolved the difference d)es nst repre ent the earth us we lrnmr it, n3r cnn the between Redfielcl and Espy and anticipated Feriel by 30 npplicati m to the reti1 earth he developed by any slizht years. niodificatim of the hypvthe-i;.” Helmhnltz, however, The circulation of the atmosphere as a whole, first con- “opens out a new province. by usia: hi; reasoning to sidered by Halley in 16S6, and inore adequately by Hnd- develop certain proce;ses w-llich are operative in any part ley in 1735, lay untouched until Rhury’s (‘Wind :ind of the atmosphere in accordance with the laws of dynamics current charts” brought him face to face with the snine and reaches conclusi ms which vne mnv expect to find problem. His model of the winds aloft, although sup- illustrated wherever the atmqihere adinits the prescribed ported by authorities ranginF from the Hebrew prophets tissunipti.ms.” The chief problem of 1neteoro1~g-ytoday to Faraday’s recent discovery of the ji:~rnmn~iietismof is the discnvery of the facts, and the adaptatinn of theory osygen, was unsatisfactory to n Nashville, Tenn. hish- to them in detnil. Shaw names Buys Ballst, Buchan, school principrtl, whose hobby w-as celestial mechnnics de Tastes, nntl Duclaus, Hilclebranclsson, Teisserenc de and hydrodynamics. Tlis was IVillixni Ferrel (1 817- Bort, Hnnn, and Koeppen, as representatives of tllis 91) whose first pnper on the subject, a no!~instheintttic.:il inductive school of theoretical meteorologists. To these outline of his theory, appeared in the Nashville Joumtd we niay ndcl Sliaw himself, and the Bjerkneses, father of Medicine and Surgery, October-November 1S56. Iri nnd son. Among Americans, Frank H. Biqelow’s pro- the followinq gear, Ferrel joined the staff of the Nautical digious labors on the ‘‘ International Cloud Observations”, Alamanac Office, at Cnmbridge, Mnss., and there worked “The Barometry Report”, and a long series of papers up his ideas ancl reasoning into a mathematical paper on the general circulation of the atmosphere in the which wns published in Runlrle’s Mathematical Monthly, hioNTHLr ~VEATHER REVLEW,1902-6, fall into this vols. 1 and 2, 185s and 1S59, and in simplified form in the clnss. American Journal of Science, 1860. Among siLps that meteorology is approaching the Ferrel’s niodel of the general circulation of the n tmo- stnnclard set by astronomy, the “preciSion of wlich in sphere was necessarily based on few observations in t!ie predicting the positions of the heavenly bodies is the Arctic nnd none in the Antarctic, and WRS subsequently admiration and the envy of all other sciences” (Shaw, changed by himself in lS60 and 1SS9. The lSS9 model hlan. of Mety., pt. 1, p. 316) are the graphical calculus differed inappreciably from the circulation proposed, of atmospheric niotims of V. Bjerknes (Dynamic Mete- without niatheniatic a1 analysis, by James Thomson, orology and Hydrography, 1911) and the most explicit brother of Lord Kelvin, before the British association in esample of quantitative forecasting, of Richardson 1837. However, Ferrel’s earlier intuition proves to be (Weather Predicti in by Numerical Process, Cambridge, more in accord with the working picture formed by Hilde- England, 1922). The latter scheme is ds~iyedto forecast brandsson and de Bort from more complete collections of the weather of the whole world, and the author estimates data. (Hobbs, Glacial Anticyclones, 19‘76, p. 19.) the number of computers required to “race the weather” Ferrel’s great contribution to nieteorology was the dis- at the staggering number of 64,000. It ia therefore covery and mathematical formulation of the laws of mo- obvious that further rimeering as well as improvement tion of the atmosphere on a rotating globe. Following in economic and political conditions is necessary before his pioneer effort, Sprung, Guldberg and Mohn, Helm- the qunlitative ineteorology handed down to us by Red- holtz, Margules, Siemens, Oberbeck, and Rayleigh hnve field, Espy, ancl Looniis can be superseded by the worked to improve and extend the subje:t. Ferrel’s quaniitative meteorology of Helmholtz, Bjerknes, and mathembtical style has been criticised ns lacking finish, Ilicliurdson.

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