The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rotch, Abbott Laurence

ROTCH, rŏch, Abbott Laurence, American meteorologist: b. Boston, Mass., 6 Jan. 1861; d. 5 April 1912. He was graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1884, and in the following year established and afterward maintained at his own expense a meteorological observatory at Milton, Mass. On 14 Dec. 1906 he was appointed professor of meteorology at Harvard University. He was the first meteorologist in the United States to measure the height and velocity of clouds, and to use kites with a self-recording instrument for this purpose. He also made experiments in wireless telegraphy. He was the author of ‘Sounding of the Ocean of Air’ (1900); ‘The Conquest of the Air’ (1909).