was published in facsimile by George G. Symons in 1891. Doubtless
many similar monastic diaries have been lost to us. In
1653 Ferdinand II. of Tuscany organized a local system of
stations and daily records which extended over and beyond
northern Italy. This was the first fairly complete meteorological
system in Europe. The records kept during the years 1655–1670
at the Cloister Angelus near Florence (were reduced by Libri,
professor of mathematics at Pisa, and published in 1830.
The history of meteorology is marked by the production of comprehensive treatises embodying the current state of our knowledge. Such were Louis Cotte’s Traité de météorologie (Paris, 1774) and his Mémoires sur la météorologie, supplement au traité (1788); Ludwig Kämtz’s Lehrbuch der Meteorologie (Halle, 1831–1836) and his Vorlesungen (1840; French 1842, English 1845); Sir John Herschel’s Meteorology (London, 1840); the splendid series of memoirs by H. W. Brandes in Gehler’s Physikalisches Wörterbuch (Leipzig, 1820–1840); E. E. F. W. Schmid’s Grundriss der Meteorologie (Leipzig, 1862); Ferrel’s Recent Advances in Meteorology (Washington, 1885); the great works of Julius Hann, as summarized in his Handbuch der Klimatologie (1883; 2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1897; vol. i., English 1903) and his Lehrbuch der Meteorologie (Leipzig, 1901, 2nd ed. 1906); the extensive studies of J. E. Woeikoff (Voeikof), as presented in his Klima der Erde (Russian 1883, German 1885) and his Meteorologie (Russian 1904).
The development of this science has been greatly stimulated by the regular publication of special periodicals such as the Zeitschrift of the Austrian Meteorological Society, 1866–1885, vol. 21 appearing with vol. 3 of the Meteorologische Zeitschrift of the German Meteorological Society in 1886, and since that date this journal has been jointly maintained by the two societies. The analogous journals of the Royal Meteorological Society, London, 1850 to date, the Scottish Meteorological Society, 1860 to date, the Meteorological Society of France, 1838 to date, the Italian Meteorological Society, and the American Meteorological Journal, 1885–1895, have all played important parts in the history of meteorology. On the other hand, the Annals of the Central Meteorological Office at Paris, the Archiv of the Deutsche Seewarte at Hamburg, the Annals and the Repertorium of the Central Physical Observatory at St Petersburg, the Annales of the Central Meteorological Office at Rome, Bulletin of International Simultaneous Met. Obs. and the Monthly Weather Review of the Weather Bureau at Washington, the Abhandlungen of the Royal Prussian Meteorological Institute at Berlin, the Meteorological Papers of the Meteorological Office, London, and the transactions of numerous scientific societies, have represented the important official contributions of the respective national governments to technical meteorology.
The recent international union for aerial exploration by kites and balloons has given rise to two important publications, i.e. the Veröffentlichungen of the International, Commission for Scientific Aerostatics (Strassburg, 1905, et seq.), devoted to records of observations, and the Beiträge zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre (Strassburg, 1904, et seq.), devoted to research.
The necessity of studying the atmosphere as a unit and of securing uniform accuracy in the observations has led to the formation of a permanent International Meteorological Committee (of which in 1909 the secretary was Professor Dr G. Hellmann of Berlin, and the president Dr W. N. Shaw of London). Under its directions conferences and general congresses have been held, beginning with that of 1872 at Leipzig. Its International Tables, Atlas of Clouds, Codex of Instructions, and Forms for Climatological Publications illustrate the activity and usefulness of this committee.
Modern meteorology has been developed along two lines of study, based respectively on maps of monthly and annual averages and on daily weather maps. The latter study seems to have been begun by H. W. Brandes in Leipzig, who first, about 1820, compiled maps for 1783 from the data collected in the Ephemerides mannheimensis, and subsequently published maps of the European storms of 1820 and 1821. Simultaneously with Brandes we find William C. Redheld in New York compiling a chart of the hurricane of 1821, which was published in 1831, and was the first of many memoirs by him on hurricanes that completely established their rotary and progressive motion. Soon after this Piddington and Sir William Reid began their great works on the storms of the Orient. About 1825 James Pollard Espy, in Philadelphia, began the publication of his views as to the motive power of thunderstorms and tornadoes, and in 1842 was appointed “meteorologist to the U.S. government” and assigned to work in the office of the surgeon-general of the army, where he prepared daily weather maps that were published in his four successive “Reports.” In 1848 the three American leaders united in letters to Professor Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, urging that the telegraph be used for collecting data for daily maps and weather predictions. Favourable action was taken in 1849, the Smithsonian maps began to be compiled about 1851 and were displayed in public from 1853 onwards. Meanwhile in England James Glaisher, with the help of the daily press, carried out similar work, publishing his first map in 1851 as soon as daily weather maps of sufficient extent could be promptly prepared by the help of the telegraph. The destructive storm of the 14th of November 1854, in the Crimea gave U. J. J. Le Verrier, at Paris, an opportunity to propose the proper action, and his proposals were immediately adopted by the secretary of war, Marshal Vaillant. On the 17th of February 1855 the emperor ordered the director-general of government telegraph lines to co-operate completely with Le Verrier in the organization of a bureau of telegraphic meteorology. The international daily bulletin of the Paris Observatory began to be printed in regular form on the 1st of January 1858, and the daily map of isobars was added to the text in the autumn of 1863. The further development of this bulletin, the inclusion of British and ocean reports in 1861, the addition of special storm warnings in 1863, the publication of the Atlas des mouvements généraux covering the Atlantic in 1865, the study of local thunderstorms by Hippolyte Marié-Davy, Sonrel, Fron, Peslin, in France, and the work of Fitzroy, Buys-Ballot, Buchan, Glaisher and Thomson in Great Britain, parallel the analogous works of the American students of meteorology and form the beginnings of our modern dynamic meteorology.
The details of the historical development of this subject are well given by Hugo Hildebrand-Hildebrandsson and Léon Teisserenc de Bort in their joint work, Les Bases de la météorologie dynamique (Paris, 1898–1907). The technical material has been collected by Hann in his Lehrbuch. Many of the original memoirs have been reproduced by Brillouin in his Mémoires originaux (Paris, 1900), and in Cleveland Abbe’s Mechanics of the Earth’s Atmosphere (vol. i., 1891; vol. ii., 1909).
The publication of daily weather charts and forecasts is now carried on by all civilized nations. The list of government bureaux and their publications is given in Bartholomew’s Atlas (vol. iii., London, 1899). Special establishments for the exploration of the upper atmospheric conditions are maintained at Paris, Berlin. Copenhagen, St Petersburg, Washington and Strassburg.
The general problems of climatology (1900) are best presented in the Handbook of Dr Julius Hann (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1897). The general distribution of temperature, winds and pressure over the whole globe was first given by Buchan in charts published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1868, and again greatly revised and improved in the volume of the Challenger reports devoted to meteorology. The most complete atlas of meteorology is Buchan and Herbertson’s vol. iii. of Bartholomew’s Atlas (London, 1899). Extensive works of a more special character have been published by the London Meteorological Office, and the Deutsche Seewarte for the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Daily charts of atmospheric conditions of the whole northern hemisphere were published by the U.S. Weather Bureau from 1875 to 1883 inclusive, with monthly charts, the latter were continued through 1889. The physical problems of meteorology were discussed in Ferrel’s Recent Advances in Meteorology (Washington, 1885). Mathematical papers on this subject will be found in the author’s collection known as The Mechanics of the Earth’s Atmosphere; the memoirs by Helmholtz and Von Bezold contained in this collection have been made the basis of a most important work by Brillouin (Paris, 1898), entitled Vents contigus et nuages. A general summary of our knowledge of the mechanics and physics of the atmosphere is contained in the Report on the International Cloud Work, by F. H. Bigelow (Washington, 1900). The extensive Lehrbuch (Leipzig, 1901; 2nd ed., 1906)
by Dr Julius Hann is an authoritative work. The optical
