solid and coherent facts of nature, all ready to be put together and worked up by the meteorologist into a noble and useful science.
Having noticed the first attempt ever made to establish a system of "Simultaneous weather-reports," and indicated the unique character of the system, as carried out by the United States since 1870, we hasten on to the history of its extension to the vast field of international meteorology. In September, 1873, the International Meteorological Congress was convened at Vienna, to consider all the graver questions that were then agitating public and private investigators, as to the progress of weather-science. The Congress was composed of official representatives, charged with the meteorlogical duties pertaining to the researches of their respective Governments. It was then proposed by the representative of the United States, General Myer, that it is desirable, with a view to their exchange, that at least one uniform observation, of such character as to be suited for the preparation of synoptic charts, be taken and recorded daily and simultaneously at as many stations as practicable throughout the world." This proposition was unanimously concurred in, and its hearty adoption by the Congress, the members of which virtually legislated for the nations they represented, at once secured the extension of the American "simultaneous" system (as inaugurated in 1870 for the United States) to the entire field of weather investigation then covered or yet to be covered by the observers of all the nations.[1] Soon after the adoption of this proposition at Vienna, by the courteous cooperation of scientific men and the chiefs of the meteorological weather-bureaus of the different countries, records of uniform observations, taken daily and simultaneously with the observations taken over the United States and the adjacent islands,
- ↑ Referring to an exchange of United States weather-reports with those of Canada, the Chief Signal-Officer, in his annual report for 1872, said: "It is to be hoped the system may be extended in the Canadas, and the cooperation be yet closer, this connection of the services becoming the first link in the grand chain of interchanged international reports destined with a higher civilization to bind together the signal-services of the world" (p. 83). The same scheme he had foreshadowed in a public document dated January 18, 1870, and also the plan of using ocean-cables for storm-warnings.
example of a storm central at Omaha at 8 a. m. and moving toward New York: since the difference of actual time between the two cities is nearly one and a half hour, and the storm-center might be progressing at the rate of forty-five or fifty miles an hours, the Omaha report would represent its bearings, as respects New York, from sixty to seventy miles out of its true place? So also all observers not on the meridian of New York would more or less mis-locate the center. Since nearly all cyclones and anti-cyclones move from east to west or from west to east, and very few in a meridional direction, the systematic misrepresentation of their relative positions in point of longitude works grave defects. A weather-map based on such non-simultaneous reports, instead of faithfully mirroring the sky overhanging a continent, necessarily gives it rather a wry face. Even at this date, we can not say that all European weather-stations take observations simultaneously. So far as they do, their present method is shaped after that introduced originally in this country by General Myer, in 1870. Professor Espy called his observations "simultaneous, or nearly simultaneous"; but evidently they were taken at the same hour of local time, and were, therefore, less "simultaneous" than the Smithsonian.
