108 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BALTIMORE MEETING 



GEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF ARMY CANTONMENTS AND OF UNITED 

 STATES BOUNDARY REGIONS 



BY M. E. CAMPBELL 



Presented by title in the absence of the author. 



SIGNAL CORPS SCHOOL OF METEOROLOGY 

 BY OLIVER L. FASSIG ^ 



(AJ)stract) 



lu the summer of 1918 a school of instruction was established at the Agri- 

 cultural and Mechanical College of Texas, under authority of the Chief Signal 

 Officer of the Army, for the purpose of training approximately 1,000 men in the 

 applications of the science of meteorology to the operations of the war. 



The first class consisted of 300 men, mostly recruited from among college men 

 with several years' experience as engineers. The technical instruction, cover- 

 ing a period of two to three months, comprised daily lectures in meteorology or 

 aerology ; frequent cloud studies in the field ; the construction and interpreta- 

 tion of weather maps ; the preparation of forms and the making of daily ob 

 servations of the weather, such as are made at all Weather Bureau stations of 

 the first order; and field exercises in the use of a theodolite, a modified sur- 

 veyor's transit, used to determine the paths of small rubber balloons filled with 

 hydrogen, the movements of the balloon indicating the velocity and direction of 

 the winds to great elevations above the earth's surface. 



The high grade of the men composing the class made it possible to develop 

 new mechanical devices and quick methods of reduction of observations for 

 determining the ballistic wind for correcting long-range artillery fire. The 

 projectiles fired from the big modern guns not only have a horizontal range of 

 thirty to forty miles, but they traverse the atmosphere to heights of ten to fif- 

 teen miles and more. The wind velocities along the path of the projectile may 

 vary from a few miles per hour to fifty or even a hundred miles, while the 

 winds at an elevation of two or three miles may blow in a direction directly 

 opposite to that at the earth's surface. For accurate long-range firing, it is 

 obviously necessary to know the exact atmospheric conditions along the path 

 of the projectile and to get this information quickly. 



The instruction staff of the School of Meteorology consisted of : Dr. Oliver L. 

 rassig, U. S. Weather Bureau, Chief Instructor and Director ; Dr. Charles F. 

 Brooks, Yale University, Instructor in Meteorology ; Lieut. William S. Bowen, 

 Signal Reserve Corps, Instructor in Aerologj^ ; Mr. William T. Lathrop, U. S. 

 Weather Bureau, Instructor in Meteorology. 



At the time of the signing of the armistice, about 500 men had been trained 

 as weather observers, 300 of whom were sent to France and 200 assigned to 

 duty in this country at a score or more of flying fields, artillery fields, and bal- 

 loon schools, for the purpose of supplying these units of the army with accu- 

 rate information concerning actual atmospheric conditions or prospective 

 weather conditions. 



Read in abstract from manuscript. 



1 Introduced by N. M. Fenneman. 



