SKETCH OF CLEVELAND ABBE. 405 



In the beginning lie was the one man in the service who knew much 

 of meteorology, and from that time to the present he has been con- 

 spicuously the representative of that science in Government employ. 

 The constant change in the personnel of a bureau of the array, the con- 

 tinued coming in of this oflBcer and the going out of that, is one of the 

 serious obstacles in the way oi the successful cultivation of a science, 

 either pure or applied, under a military regime. The weather service 

 has been preserved from stagnation and decay by the continued presence 

 of such an ardent student as Professor Abbe. On all important ques- 

 tions touching the scientific work of the service, his advice has been 

 sought by the Chief Signal Officer; most plans for its improvement and 

 extension have originated with him, and he has done much to stimulate 

 the study of meteorology outside of the service as well as within it." 



AVe are informed by Mrs, Hazen, widow of the late Chief of the 

 Signal Office, that Professor Abbe was always held in high esteem by 

 her husband, " and relied on not only as a veiy scientific man, but as a 

 loyal friend." This sentence brings out another salient trait in his 

 character — his loyalty to his chief. Readers of the " Monthly " will 

 recollect the tribute which he improved the first opportunity after 

 General Ilazen's death to pay to his character and the worth of his 

 work for science ; but they do not know, for that is matter of personal 

 confidence, that he was extremely anxious that General Hazen should 

 receive full credit for all that he did, all that he helped to do, and all 

 that he was in any way the means of having done for science ; and par- 

 ticularly that he should be vindicated from the unfriendly criticisms 

 which the newspapers had cast against him— all of which Professor 

 Abbe believed to be unjust and unfounded. 



Professor Abbe's efforts, while engaged at the Cincinnati Observa- 

 tory, to furnish accurate time to the watchmakers and the public clocks 

 of the city have already been mentioned. This service he regarded 

 as always a daily duty in a well-organized observatory. Similar work 

 was already performed by a number of observatories in America and 

 Europe, one of the earliest instances of it being the giving of the time 

 to the city and province of the Magnetic Observatory at Toronto in 

 1842. The British Astronomer Royal began the dropping of the 

 noon time-ball at Deal in 1853, and was followed by the Fnited States 

 Naval Observatory at Washington in 1855. An automatic apparatus 

 for controlling the public clock from the observatory was ordered in 

 Cincinnati in 1870. Afterward the Pennsylvania Railroad Company 

 intrusted its time-signals to the Allegheny Observatory, under Lang- 

 ley. In 1877 an arrangement was made between the Naval Observa- 

 tory and the "Western Union Telegraph Company for delivering time- 

 signals at important places in the United States. 



The inconveniences arising from the ever-varying standards of local 

 time, which required a change of the watch for every few miles of 

 traveling east or west, had attracted an increasing attention for many 



