292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



solid and coherent facts of nature, all ready to be put together and 

 worked up by the meteorologist into a noble and useful science. 



Having noticed the first attempt ever made to establish a system of 

 " Simultaneous weather-reports," and indicated the unique character of 

 the system, as carried out by the United States since 1870, we hasten 

 on to the history of its extension to the vast field of international 

 meteorology. In September, 1873, the International Meteorological 

 Congress was convened at Vienna, to consider all the graver questions 

 that were then agitating public and private investigators, as to the 

 progress of weather-science. The Congress was composed of ofiicial 

 representatives, charged with the meteorological duties pertaining to 

 the researches of their respective Governments. It was then proposed 

 by the representative of the United States, General Myer, that " it is 

 desirable, tcith a view to their exchange, that at least one uniform 

 ohset'vation, of such character as to be suited for the preparation of 

 synoptic charts, he taken and recorded daily and simultaneously at as 

 many stations as p>racticable throughout the world.'''' This proposition 

 was unanimously concurred in, and its hearty adoption by the Congress, 

 the members of which virtually legislated for the nations they repre- 

 sented, at once secured the extension of the American " simultaneous " 

 system (as inaugurated in 1870 for the United States) to the entire 

 field of weather investigation then covered or yet to be covered by the 

 observers of all the nations.* Soon after the adoj^tion of this proposi- 

 tion at Vienna, by the courteous cooperation of scientific men and the 

 chiefs of the meteorological weather-bureaus of the different countries, 

 records of uniform observations, taken daily and simultaneously with 

 the observations taken over the United States and the adjacent islands, 



example of a storm central at Omaha at 8 a. m. and moving toward New York : since the 

 difference of actual time between the two cities is nearly one and a half hour, and the 

 storm-center might be progressing at the rate of forty-five or fifty miles an hours, the 

 Omaha report would represent its bearings, as respects New York, from sixty to seventy 

 miles out of its true place ? So also all observers not on the meridian of New York would 

 more or less mis-locate the center. Since neai-ly all cyclones and anti-cyclones move from 

 east to west or from west to east, and very few in a meridional direction, the systematic 

 misrepresentation of their relative positions in point of longitude works grave defects, A 

 weather-map based on such non-simultaneous reports, instead of faithfully mirroring the 

 sky overhanging a continent, necessarily gives it rather a wry face. Even at this date, we 

 can not say that all European weather-stations take observations simultaneously. So 

 far as they do, their present method is shaped after that introduced originally in this 

 country by General Myer, in 1870. Professor Espy called his observations " simulta- 

 neous, or nearly simultaneous " ; but evidently they were taken at the same hour of local 

 time, and were, therefore, less " simultaneous " than the Smithsonian. 



* Referring to an exchange of United States weather-reports with those of Canada, 

 the Chief Signal-Officer, in his annual report for 1872, said: "It is to be hoped the 

 system, may be extended in the Canadas, and the cooperation be yet closer, this connec- 

 tion of the services becoming the first link in the grand chain of interchanged interna- 

 tional reports destined with a higher civilization to bind together the signal-services of 

 the world " (p. 83). The same scheme he had foreshadowed in a public document dated 

 January 18, 1870, and also the plan of using ocean-cables for storm-warnings. 



