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Read Ebook: Lullaby-Land: Songs of Childhood by Field Eugene Grahame Kenneth Editor Robinson Charles Illustrator
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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM
THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY:
PAPER 23
THE INTRODUCTION OF SELF-REGISTERING
METEOROLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS
THE FIRST SELF-REGISTERING INSTRUMENTS 99
SELF-REGISTERING SYSTEMS 105
CONCLUSIONS 114
The flowering of science in the 17th century was accompanied by an efflorescence of instrument invention as luxurious as that of science itself. Although there were foreshadowing events, this flowering seems to have owed much to Galileo, whose interest in the measurement of natural phenomena is well known, and who is himself credited with the invention of the thermometer and the hydrostatic balance, both of which he devised in connection with experimentation on specific scientific problems. Many, if not most, of the other Italian instrument inventors of the early 17th century were his disciples. Benedetto Castelli, being interested in the effect of rainfall on the level of a lake, constructed a rain gauge about 1628. Santorio, well known as a pioneer in the quantification of animal physiology, is credited with observations, about 1626, that led to the development of the hygrometer.
Both of these contemporaries were interested in Galileo's most famous invention, the thermoscope--forerunner of the thermometer--which he developed about 1597 as a method of obtaining comparisons of temperature. The utility of the instrument was immediately recognized by physicists , and much ingenuity was expended on its perfection over a 50-year period, in northern Europe as well as in Italy. The conversion of this open, air-expansion thermoscope into the modern thermometer was accomplished by the Florentine Accademia del Cimento about 1660.
Galileo also inspired the barometer, through his speculations on the vacuum, which, in 1643, led his disciple Torricelli to experiments proving the limitation to nature's horror of a vacuum. Torricelli's apparatus, unlike Galileo's thermoscope, represented the barometer in essentially its classical form. In his earliest experiments, Torricelli observed that the air tended to become "thicker and thinner"; as a consequence, we find the barometer in use for meteorological observation as early as 1649.
The meetings of the Accademia terminated in 1667, but the 5-year-old Royal Society of London had already become as fruitful a source of new instruments, largely through the abilities of its demonstrator, Robert Hooke, whose task it was to entertain and instruct the members with experiments. In the course of devising these experiments Hooke became perhaps the most prolific instrument inventor of all time. He seems to have invented the first wind pressure gauge, as an aid to seamen, and he improved the bathometer, hygrometer, hydrometer, and barometer, as well as instruments not directly involved in measurement such as the vacuum pump and sea-water sampling devices. As in Florence, these instruments were immediately brought to bear on the observation of nature.
It does not appear, however, that we would be justified in concluding that the rise of scientific meteorology was inspired by the invention of instruments, for meteorology had begun to free itself of the traditional weather-lore and demonology early in the 17th century. The Landgraf of Hesse described some simultaneous weather observations, made without instruments, in 1637. Francis Bacon's "Natural History of the Wind," considered the first special work of this kind to attain general circulation, appeared in 1622. It seems likely that the rise of scientific meteorology was an aspect of the general rationalization of nature study which occurred at this time, and that the initial impetus for such progress was gained not from the invention of instruments but from the need of navigators for wind data at a time when long voyages out of sight of land were becoming commonplace.
It should be noted in this connection that the two most important instruments, the thermometer and barometer, were in no way inspired by an interest in meteorology. But the observation made early in the history of the barometer that the atmospheric pressure varied in some relationship to visible changes in the weather soon brought that instrument into use as a "weather glass." In particular, winds were attributed to disturbances of barometric equilibrium, and wind-barometric studies were made by Evangelista Torricelli, Edm? Mariotte, and Edmund Halley, the latter publishing the first meteorological chart. In 1678-1679 Gottfried Leibniz endeavored to encourage observations to test the capacity of the barometer for foretelling the weather.
Other questions of a quasi-meteorological nature interested the scientists of this period, and brought other instruments into use. Observations of rainfall and evaporation were made in pursuit of the ancient question of the sources of terrestrial water, the maintenance of the levels of seas, etc. Physicians brought instruments to bear on the question of the relationship between weather and the incidence of disease. The interrelationship between these various meteorological enterprises was not long in becoming apparent. Soon after its founding in 1657 the Florentine academy undertook, through the distribution of thermometers, barometers, hygrometers, and rain gauges, the establishment of an international network of meteorological observation stations, a network which did not survive the demise of the Accademia itself ten years later.
Not for over a century was the first thoroughgoing attempt made at systematic observation. There was a meteorological section in the Academy of Sciences at Mannheim from 1763, and subsequently a separate society for meteorology. In 1783, the Academy published observations from 39 stations, those from the central station comprising data from the hygrometer, wind vane , rain gauge, evaporimeter, and apparatus for geomagnetism and atmospheric electricity, as well as data from the thermometer and barometer. The Mannheim system was also short-lived, being terminated by the Napoleonic invasion, but systems of comparable scope were attempted throughout Europe and America during the next generation.
Nearly 200 years of observation had not, however, noticeably improved the weather, and the naive faith in the power of instruments to reveal its mysteries, which had possessed many an early meteorologist, no longer charmed the scientist of the early 19th century. In the first published report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1833, J. D. Forbes called for a reorganization of procedures:
In the science of Astronomy, for example, as in that of Optics, the great general truths which emerge in the progress of discovery, though depending for their establishment upon a multitude of independent facts and observations, possess sufficient unity to connect in the mind the bearing of the whole; and the more perfectly understood connexion of parts invites to further generalization.
Very different is the position of an infant science like Meteorology. The unity of the whole ... is not always kept in view, even as far as our present very limited general conceptions will admit of: and as few persons have devoted their whole attention to this science alone ... no wonder that we find strewed over its irregular and far-spread surface, patches of cultivation upon spots chosen without discrimination and treated on no common principle, which defy the improver to inclose, and the surveyor to estimate and connect them. Meteorological instruments have been for the most part treated like toys, and much time and labor have been lost in making and recording observations utterly useless for any scientific purpose. Even the numerous registers of a rather superior class ... hardly contain one jot of information ready for incorporation in a Report on the progress of Meteorology....
Forbes goes on to call for a greater emphasis on theory, and the replacement of the many small-scale observatories with "a few great Registers" to be adequately maintained by "great Societies" or by the government. He suggests that the time for pursuit of theory might be gained from "the vague mechanical task to which at present they generally devote their time, namely the search for great numerical accuracy, to a superfluity of decimal places exceeding the compass of the instrument to verify."
From its founding the British Association sponsored systematic observation at various places. In 1842 it initiated observations at the Kew Observatory, which has continued until today to be the premier meteorological observatory in the British Empire. The American scientist Joseph Henry observed the functioning of an observatory maintained by the British Association at Plymouth in 1837, and when he became Secretary of the new Smithsonian Institution a few years later he made the furtherance of meteorology one of its first objectives.
The Kew Observatory set a pattern for systematic observation in England as, from 1855, did the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. The instruments used differed little from those in use at Mannheim over half a century earlier . They were undoubtedly more accurate, but this should not be overstressed. Forbes had noted in his report of 1832 that some scientists were then calling for a return to Torricelli, for the construction of a temporary barometer on the site in preference to reliance on the then existing manufactured instruments.
The First Self-Registering Instruments
From the middle of the 17th century meteorological observations were recorded in manuscript books known as "registers," many of which were published in the early scientific journals. The most effective utilization of these observations was in the compilation of the history of particular storms, but where a larger synthesis was concerned they tended, as Forbes has shown, to show themselves unsystematic and non-comparable. The principal problems of meteorological observation have been from the outset the construction of precisely comparable instruments and their use to produce comparable records. The former problem has been frequently discussed, and perhaps, as Forbes suggests, overemphasized. It is the latter problem with which we are here concerned.
The idea of mechanizing the process of observation, not yet
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