On February 9, 1950, the National Weather Service reached
the age of 80 years. It was on February 9, 1870, that Congress
approved a joint resolution creating a weather service as
part of the Signal Service (later Signal Corps) of the Army.
This undertaking had largely grown out of the efforts of
Prof. Cleveland Abbe (1838-1916), who was at that time director
of the Cincinnati Observatory. With the assistance of the
Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and the Western Union Telegraph
Company, Professor Abbe had in 1869 organized a system of
telegraphic weather reports, daily weather maps, and weather
forecasts. It was the first undertaking of its kind in America,
and was the prototype of the service established the following
year by the Federal Government. What has happened to the
National Weather Service since is history, but the circumstances
of its inception are perhaps less well known. Let Professor
Abbe's own words, written only a few months before his death
describe these beginnings.
"My
boyhood life in New York City has impressed me with the
popular ignorance and also with the great need for something
better than local lore and weather proverbs. The popular
articles in the New York daily papers by Merriam, Espy,
Joseph Henry and
others -- notably Redfield and Loomis -- had by 1857 convinced
me that man could and must overcome our ignorance of the
destructive winds rains. It was in the summer of 1857 that
I read the beginning of the classic article by William Ferrel
in the MATHEMATICAL MONTHLY. I realized that he had overcome
many of the hidden difficulties of the theories of storms
and winds. From that day he was my guide and authority.
During 1859-1864, in the practice and study of astronomy
with Brunow at Ann Arbor and Gould at Cambridge, Mass.,
I was impressed with the unsatisfactory state of our knowledge
of atmospheric refraction. Two years later, my experience
at Poulkova, Russia, and at our Naval Observatory, Washington,
seemed to justify my conclusion that astronomer who would
improve their meridional measurements must investigate their
local atmospheric conditions more thoroughly, and to this
end must have numerous surrounding meteorological observations.
In my inaugural address at Cincinnati on May 1, 1868, I
stated that with a proper system of weather reports much
could be done for the welfare of man, and astronomy also
could be benefited.
"This
suggestion was taken up by Mr. John Gano, president of the
local chamber of commerce; a committee met me, approved
my plans and promised the expenses of a first trial. I had
the total solar eclipse of August 7, 1869, on my hands,
but immediately began to arrange for 40 voluntary meteorological
correspondents. On my return from the eclipse at Sioux Falls
City I stopped at Chicago and formally invited the Chicago
Board of Trade to join in extending the Cincinnati system
to the Great Lakes, but this invitation was declined by
the Chicago Board of Trade.... I returned at once to Cincinnati,
issued the first number of the Cincinnati Weather Bulletin
promptly, as promised, on September 1, 1869; it contained
only a few observations telegraphed from distant observers
and announced "probabilities" for the next day ....
My forecasts were treated very kindly by all. I had anticipated
a slow increase in accuracy; I ventured to write my father
in New York City; `I have started that which the country
will not willingly let die." I wrote a short note to the
NEW YORK TIMES (or TRIBUNE) telling them ho useful we could
be to their shipping. On September 3, 1869, I even ventured
to offer a daily telegram by the French cable to Le Verrier,
as founder of the BULLETIN HEBDOMADAIRE DE L'ASSOCIATION
SCIENTIFIQUE, and who could fully sympathize with my hopes
and plans .... My daily telegram from Milwaukee came from
the well-known Smithsonian observer and author Prof. Increase
Allen Lapham. He had known and appreciated the works of
Espy, Loomis, and others, and although he had become absorbed
in other studies he urged the local Milwaukee society to
do something for Lake Michigan. His friends were just about
to go to the Richmond meeting of the National Board of Trade;
there they met William Hopper and John A. Gano. These merchants
of Cincinnati found that they had the same idea as H.E.
Paine of Milwaukee, i.e., that the Federal Government should
develop the Cincinnati enterprise and make it useful to
the whole country. The National Board of Trade endorsed
this idea; Professor Lapham of Milwaukee drew up some statistics
of storms and destructions on the Lakes; the Hon. Halbert
E. Paine prepared a bill; each put his shoulders to the
wheel, and behold, on February 9, 1870, the Secretary of
War was authorized to carry out this new duty.
[Weather Bureau Topics, February 1950]
