302 Memorial of George Broivji Goode. 



The seeds planted by the armj^ in 1819 began to bear perfect fruit fifty 

 years later, when, by act of Congress, in 1870, the Secretary of War was 

 authorized to carry into effect a scheme for ' ' giving notice by telegraph 

 and signals of the approach and force of storms," and the organization 

 of a meteorological bureau adequate to the investigation of American 

 storms, and their preannouncement along the Northern lakes and the 

 seacoast was, under the auspices of the War Department, intrusted to the 

 Chief Signal Officer of the Army, Brigadier- General Albert J. M^'er, and 

 a division, created in his office, was designated as the Division of tele- 

 grams and reports for the benefit of commerce. 



By a subsequent act of Congress, approved June 10, 1872, the Signal 

 Service was charged with the duty of providing such stations, signals, 

 and reports as might be found necessar}^ for extending its research in the 

 interest of agriculture. In 1873, the work of the bureau of the division 

 having been eminently successful, and its successes having been recog- 

 nized abroad as well as in this country. Congress, b}- a further act, 

 authorized the establishment of signal-service stations at the light-houses 

 and life-saving stations on the lake seacoasts, and made provision for 

 connecting them with telegraph lines or cables, " to be constructed, main- 

 tained, and worked under the direction of a chief signal officer of the 

 Army, or the Secretarj^ of War and the Secretary of the Treasur}-," and 

 in this year also was begun the publication of a monthly Weather 

 Review, summarizing in a popular way all its data showing the result 

 of its investigations, as well as presenting these in graphic weather 

 charts. 



In 1874 the entire system of Smithsonian weather observation in all 

 parts of the United States was transferred by Professor Henry to the 

 Signal Service. A few months previously, at the proposal of the Chief 

 Signal Officer, in the International Congress of Meteorologists convened 

 at Vienna, the system of world-wide cooperative simultaneous weather 

 observations, since then so extensively developed, was inaugurated, and 

 began to contribute its data to the Signal Office records. It is unneces- 

 .sary to trace further the history of the beginning of the meteorological 

 work of the Signal Service, but I doubt not that everyone at all familiar 

 with its subsequent history, under the leadership of Generals Hazen and 

 Greely, will agree with the opinion of Judge Daly, the president of the 

 American Geographical Society, when he said that "nothing in the 

 nature of scientific investigation by the National Government has proved 

 so acceptable to the people, or has been so productive in so short a time 

 of such important results, as the establishment of the Signal vService 

 Bureau." ' 



The sixth President, John Quincy Adams, a man of culture broad and 

 deep, found the presidency of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 



' 1883, History of the United States Sij^nal Service, with catalogue of its exhibit as 

 the International Fisheries Exhibition. I^ondon, 1883; Washington City, 1883; 

 octavo, pp. 1-28. 



