The Weather Bureau 



363 



the foundation of all meteorological 

 science. Their inventors as little ap- 

 preciated the value of their discoveries 

 as they dreamed of the great western 

 empire which should first use their in- 

 struments to measure the inception and 

 development of storms. 



About one hundred j^ears after the 

 invention of the barometer, nameh', in 

 1747, Benjamin Franklin, patriot, states- 

 man, diplomat, and scientist, divined 

 that certain storms had a rotar}' motion 

 and that they progressed in a north- 

 easterly direction. It was prophetic 

 that these ideas should have come to 

 him long before any one had ever pre- 

 pared charts showing observations si- 

 multaneously taken at many stations. 

 But, although his ideas in this respect 

 were more important than his act of 

 drawing the lightning from the clouds 

 and identifying it with the electricity 

 of the laboratorj^, his contemporaries 

 thought little of his philosoph}^ of 

 storms. It remained for Redfield, Espy, 

 Maury, lyoomis, and Abbe, one hun- 

 dred years later, to gather the data and 

 completely establish the truth of that 

 which the great Franklin had dimly 

 yet wonderfully outlined. Although 

 American scientists were the pioneers 

 in discovering the rotary and progres- 

 sive character of storms and in demon- 

 strating the practicability of weather 

 services, the United States was the 

 fourth country to give legal autonomy 

 to a weather service; but no one of the 

 other countries had an area of such ex- 

 tent as to render it possible to construct 

 such a broad sjmoptic picture of air 

 conditions as is necessary in the mak- 

 ing of the most useful forecasts. It 

 would require an international service, 

 embracing all the countries of Europe, 

 to equal ours in the extent of area 

 covered. 



Congress authorized the first appro- 

 priation of $20,000 to inaugurate a ten- 

 tative weather service in 1870. Gen. 

 Albert J. Myer, to whom was assigned 



the chiefship of the new meteorological 

 service, doubtless had no conception of 

 the future wonderful extension of the 

 system that he was then authorized to 

 begin. It is comparatively easy, with 

 the great system now at our command 

 and with scientists who have had twenty 

 years' experience in watching the de- 

 velopment and progression of storms, 

 to herald to the shipping and other in- 

 dustries of the United States forewarn- 

 ings of coming atmospheric changes 

 th,at may be destructive to either life or 

 property. Former Secretary of Agri- 

 culture J. Sterling Morton did much to 

 place the meteorological service of the 

 Government on a suitable foundation 

 by having all of its employes and higher 

 officials classified and placed within the 

 civil service. This was essential to the 

 proper performance of the then existing 

 duties of the service. The present Sec- 

 retary of Agriculture, James Wilson, 

 has continued the merit system in the 

 Weather Bureau, and has greatly im- 

 proved and extended its operations. 

 Thanks to his policy of development, 

 the Weather Service has had a phenom- 

 enal growth during the past four years. 



EXPANSE OF ATMOSPHERIC FIELD 

 SURVEYED BY THE FORECASTER 



It is a wonderful picture of atmos- 

 pheric conditions that is presented twice 

 daily to the trained eye of the weather 

 forecaster. It embraces an area extend- 

 ing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 

 from the north coast of South America 

 over Mexico, the islands of the West 

 Indies and the Bahamas, northward to 

 the uttermost confines of Canadian habi- 

 tation. It is a panoramic picture of the 

 exact air conditions over this broad area 

 that is twice daily presented to the study 

 of our experts. Hurricanes, cold waves, 

 hot waves, or rainstorms are shown 

 wherever present in this broad area. 

 Their development since last report is 

 noted, and from the knowledge thus 



