THE WEATHER BUREAU 395 



express. Like the railroad man, he knows how much fuel 

 his storm had to start with, how much it may gather by the 

 way, the grades it will have to take, where it may be switched 

 from the main line; and, like the railroad man, he is being 

 constantly informed by telegraph of the condition of the right 

 of wa}^, as well as of the condition of the wind column itself. 



B}^ the time the forecaster has reached his general con- 

 clusion it is half past eight, and the four thousand weather 

 watchers are waiting for the composite report. It is necessar}^ 

 not only that the forecast shall be sent far and wide, but also 

 that charts depicting the whole aerial condition of the United 

 States at the time the forecast was made shall be i)rinted and 

 posted all over the country. It is manifestly impossi]>le to 

 print within an hour the required 18,000 charts in Washington, 

 D. C, and transmit them to all parts of the country. So 

 information for making charts is sent to all state centers and 

 from them in turn to the various sections of the states. The 

 telegraph operator in the corner of the room has turned to 

 the transmitter, and is distriljuting this information in code 

 over all the telegraph trunk lines. The local forecaster in 

 each state has been making a special state forecast of his own, 

 which, with the corroborative general information received 

 from Washington, he transmits to every one of his state 

 stations. 



Now, a man who was distributing type in the other corner 

 of the room has meantime gotten data which enable him to 

 set a chart. He does not set type like an ordinary- printer. 

 His stick is a large plate similar to those from whijch charts are 

 printed, but in many places in the face of the plate are little 

 holes. Into these holes the printer puts his t}^o. Each 

 type face is a symbol indicating much or little temperature, 

 pressure, rain, wind, or fog. There are lioles for type along 

 the Atlantic seaboard, in the Mississippi valley, along the 

 lakes and the gulf, on the Piicific slope, along rivers and on 

 mountain tops. Every large district center has a printer 

 working in unison with the man in Washington. But the 

 small outlying distributing stations cannot afford to print by 

 this process, and there the local weather watcher prints his 

 charts on a typewriter. 



