Contributions from
The Museum of History and Technology:
Paper 23
The Introduction of Self-Registering
Meteorological Instruments
Robert P. Multhauf
THE FIRST SELF-REGISTERING INSTRUMENTS 99
SELF-REGISTERING SYSTEMS 105
CONCLUSIONS 114
The Introduction of
SELF-REGISTERING
METEOROLOGICAL
INSTRUMENTS
Robert P. Multhauf
The development of self-registering meteorological instrumentsbegan very shortly after that of scientific meteorologicalobservation itself. Yet it was not until the 1860's, two centuriesafter the beginning of scientific observation, that theself-registering instrument became a factor in meteorology.
This time delay is attributable less to deficiencies in thetechniques of instrument-making than to deficiencies in theorganisation of meteorology itself. The critical factor was theestablishment in the 1860's of well-financed and competentlydirected meteorological observatories, most of which were createdas adjuncts to astronomical observatories.
The Author: Robert P. Multhauf is head curator of the departmentof science and technology in the United States National Museum,Smithsonian Institution.
The flowering of science in the 17th century was accompanied by anefflorescence of instrument invention as luxurious as that of scienceitself. Although there were foreshadowing events, this flowering seemsto have owed much to Galileo, whose interest in the measurement ofnatural phenomena is well known, and who is himself credited with theinvention of the thermometer and the hydrostatic balance, both of whichhe devised in connection with experimentation on specific scientificproblems. Many, if not most, of the other Italian instrument inventorsof the early 17th century were his disciples. Benedetto Castelli, beinginterested in the effect of rainfall on the level of a lake, constructeda rain gauge about 1628. Santorio, well known as a pioneer in thequantification 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 famousinvention, the thermoscope—forerunner of the thermometer—which he[Pg 97]developed about 1597 as a method of obtaining comparisons oftemperature. The utility of the instrument was immediately recognized byphysicists (not by chemists, oddly enough), and much ingenuity wasexpended on its perfection over a 50-year period, in northern Europe aswell as in Italy. The conversion of this open, air-expansion thermoscopeinto the modern thermometer was accomplished by the Florentine Accademiadel Cimento about 1660.