KEW OBSERVATORY AND METEOROLOGY
General Sir E. Sabine—Sextants and watches—Now merged into
National Physical Laboratory—Meteorological Committee,
subsequently Council of the Board of Trade—Self-recording
instruments, reduction of their tracings—Henry Smith
An early friendship that exercised great influence in shaping my future
scientific life was that of General, afterwards Sir Edward, Sabine, R.A.,
and President of the Royal Society. At the time of which I am speaking
he was its Treasurer; he also held two offices, in both of which I was
his successor after some years. They were the Chairmanship of the Kew
Observatory and the Secretaryship of the British Association, as already
mentioned. General Sabine (1788-1883) devoted himself to the study
of magnetism, to its geographical distribution and its periodic and
irregular variations. He had joined an Arctic Expedition for the express
purpose of making exact magnetical observations in high latitudes, and
he had inspired zealous and capable men, at various stations about the
globe, to establish a system of continuous and comparable observations.
This involved careful examinations of the refined instruments about to be
employed, and of instruction in their use. Means for doing all this were
established by him at Kew.
The history of the Kew Observatory is far too complicated to be fully
described here. It was first instituted owing to the desire of many of
the foremost men in physical science, in the early days of the British
Association, to have access to a place where physical experiments might
be made, and new instruments tested. The Observatory stands in the Old
Deer Park, Richmond, adjoining the Kew Gardens. It was originally built
for the amusement of George III., while he was more or less insane, and
it was begged for by the philosophers and allotted by Government to their
use. Its maintenance was defrayed by considerable grants annually voted
by the British Association, that mounted at one time to as much as £600.
This became far too onerous a charge for their means, so various changes
were made in its government and maintenance. At length it fell into the
hands of the Royal Society, and was managed by a committee appointed
by that body from among its members. It paid its way by charges made
for standardising instruments, supplemented by occasional grants. Later
on, the interest of a handsome endowment of £10,000 made by Mr. J. P.
Gassiott, of whom more presently, placed it in a fairly firm position.
At the time when Sir Edward Sabine caused me to become a member of
the Managing Committee, the Kew Observatory had obtained, through
his exertions, a high and wide reputation for the exactness of the
observations made there, and it had become the place where the outfits
of all magnetic observatories, English and foreign, were standardised,
and where intending observers were instructed. It was, in fact, the
Central Magnetic Observatory of the world. It held an almost equally
strong position in respect to the delicate pendulum apparatus by which
the force of gravity is measured at different places on the globe, and
again with regard to standard thermometers and meteorological instruments
generally. Its Managers were eager to extend its operations to any kind
of self-paying scientific experiment. Any person desirous of having a
new invention tested could get it well done there at a cost that just
repaid the trouble, subject, of course, to the permission of the Managing
Committee and to the leisure of the staff.
One of the first things that I busied myself about, when I joined it,
was to establish means for standardising sextants and other angular
instruments. The cheaper kinds of these were unnecessarily bad, and many
of the more costly were by no means so good as they should be for their
price. I thought at first of utilising heliostats to give sharp points
of reference by adjusting minute mirrors at distant points, flashing the
sun on to them from larger mirrors at the Observatory, and using the
return flashes as the points of reference. One of these small mirrors
was fixed to the south obelisk, within a cage which may still be there.
This arrangement was so far successful that beautiful stars of light were
produced in response to flashes from the Observatory, but the uncertainty
of sunshine in our climate showed the method to be of little practical
value. Then Messrs. Cooke of York, who were among the foremost makers of
large telescopes, devised an arrangement with collimators and artificial
light. They made one for Kew, which is contained within a small dark
room, and has acted perfectly, to a considerable improvement in the make
of the cheaper sextants.
Another thing that I did was to contrive an apparatus by which
thermometers could be rapidly and yet very accurately verified, and
by which from ten to twenty thousand clinical thermometers are still
annually tested. Mr. De la Rue gave me help in devising this. The few
pence gained on each of these many thermometers amounted to a respectable
sum, and confirmed the solvency of the institution, whose margin of
profit over loss was always small and had been precarious. We were thus
in a better position to extend our work and to add to our instruments,
and we did so.
Another operation which I was among the first, if not the first, to
suggest, was the rating of watches. This has been a real success. The
performances of watches, when we first took the matter in hand, was by no
means proportionate to their cost, more than one highly ornamented and
expensive time-keeper failing to obtain a class-place equal to that of
others of much inferior pretensions. Now a Kew certificated watch has a
special and recognised value, and the makers of valuable watches are far
more on their mettle than they used to be.
The influence of the Kew verifications as time went on extended in
many other directions, as by testing the performance of telescopes and
opera-glasses supplied to the army and navy, in order to ascertain
whether their capabilities were up to the specified standard. Mariners’
compasses of complicated and delicate construction were also dealt with.
A beautiful apparatus devised by Sir Wm. Abney and Major Leonard Darwin
was subsequently set up to test photographic lenses, and to enable
appropriate certificates to be given them.
So the institution throve, and was a “going concern,” but it was wholly
unequal in its scale to the rapidly growing requirements of the day.
This feeling found expression in the Anniversary Address to the British
Association in 1895, by my cousin Sir Douglas Galton; powerful support
was given to his suggestions and efforts, and finally the Kew Committee
was merged into the much larger and more important National Physical
Observatory, under the directorship of Mr. Glazebrook, which swallowed at
a single gulp the whole of our thrifty savings.
I look back with pleasure to my long connection with the Kew Observatory,
for its Committee always consisted of very capable men, who gave time
without stint to the discussion of the new questions which continually
arose, and which could be answered by experts only.
Mr. Gassiott (1797-1877), of whom I have spoken, succeeded Sir Edward
Sabine as its Chairman. He was remarkable for solid sense and business
acumen, and played a considerable part in the work of the Royal Society.
His experiments on electric discharges in quasi-vacuo were very
beautiful, and thought highly of at the time. He was a striking instance
of the combination of scientific research with the direction of an
important business, for he was one of the principal wine merchants, and
said to be the largest importer of port wine in London.
Another instance of the same combination was his successor in the same
office, Mr. Warren De la Rue (1815-1889), the famous stationer, whose
mechanical ingenuity, artistic taste, and business habits were most
valuable. I have served with him on various Councils, where his help and
influence were always felt. I shall have shortly again to speak of him.
The pretty Kew monogram was his design.
I became Chairman of the Observatory in succession to Mr. De la Rue in
1889, and held that post until 1901, when it ceased to be an independent
body. The Observatory has been fortunate in its particularly able
Superintendents, Sir Francis Ronalds of electric fame, Dr. Balfour
Stewart, subsequently Professor at Owen’s College, Manchester, Mr.
Whipple, a man of considerable natural gifts, and Dr. Chree, now
President of the Physical Society. Many members of their staff were very
trustworthy and valuable officials.
Much interest in the laws of the weather had been aroused long previously
to 1860, and it was then clearly understood by those who studied them
that future progress depended on securing numerous observations made
at the same moment, during many years, at stations scattered over
a wide area. The popular book of Maury in America and the writings
of Admiral FitzRoy drew attention to this need; and Le Verrier, the
French astronomer, issued daily charts of the Atlantic, based on such
observations as he could obtain from ships and coast stations. But these
were so few compared to the area over which they were scattered, and so
unequally distributed, that too much guess-work was needed to combine
their information into coherent and reasonable systems.
The only fairly well understood feature in those times, of movements
of the air, was that of the cyclone, or the huge tropical whirlwind
carrying destruction with it. It had been observed that when these
whirlwinds occurred in the northern hemisphere they circled in the
opposite direction to that of the hands of a clock, round a centre of low
barometric pressure, and therefore round an area of uprush of heated and
moist air, accompanied, as it would be, with heavy rains. This circling
was justly attributed to the spherical shape of the earth in combination
with its easterly rotation. An indraught, coming from the direction of
the equator, was impressed with an excess of easterly movement, and one
from the nearest pole with a deficiency; in other words, the latter
had a westerly movement relatively to the place of observation. The
observed twist was the necessary result of their coming together. An
opposite direction of twist occurred, as would have been expected, in
the two hemispheres; in the southern one, the whirlwind circled round
the area of uprush in the same direction as the hands of a clock. It was
also surmised, that the direction of the wind in ordinary weather was
everywhere governed by the same twisting conditions as in the terrible
cyclones of the tropics, where it had first been noticed.
I felt greatly disposed to examine more closely into these movements of
the air, and it occurred to me that enough help for the purpose might be
obtained in Europe from existing observatories, light-houses, and ships
in the neighbouring seas. They would enable an experimental map to be
made thrice daily for a month, in which the observations should be at
stations much closer together than those in the maps of Le Verrier, and
yet would embrace a sufficiently large area to exhibit the details of a
complete weather system. I took a great deal of pains about this, and
finally succeeded in 1862 in obtaining what was wanted.
It was with no small eagerness that I set to work to map out the data.
The month began under cyclonic conditions; then, to my intense delight,
as that system passed by, it was followed by a condition of affairs the
exact opposite to the cyclone, and supplementary to it. The cyclone, as
already said, is an uprush of air, associated with a low barometer and
clouds, due to the hot and moist air becoming chilled as it rose, and it
was fed, as just described, by an indraught with an anti-clock-ways twist
in the northern hemisphere. That which I now found, during the latter
part of the month in question, was a downrush of air associated with a
high barometer and a clear sky, and with an outflow having a clock-ways
twist. The one system was clearly supplementary to the other. So in the
memoir I contributed on the subject to the Royal Society[16], I called
the newly discovered system an “Anti-cyclone.” Speaking broadly, the
whole of the movements of the lower strata of the air are now looked upon
as a combination of cyclones and anti-cyclones, which feed one another.
The name established itself at once, and is now familiar.
The present daily weather charts of the _Times_, from data supplied by
the Meteorological Office, began to appear at a subsequent date, and
I took considerable part in their early construction. I had also made
many previous attempts to represent the distribution of the weather in
a form suitable for printing with movable types. With the aid of Mr.
W. Spottiswoode I had types cut for me of appropriate forms, and casts
from them were used in the set of my published charts based on the
above-mentioned data (_Meteorographica_ (Macmillan), 1863)[17], but these
were not a success. Later I tried the plan of cutting curves and arrows
in soft material by a drill pantagraph, whence casts might be taken for
printing. A drill pantagraph is made like an ordinary one, except that
the pencil is replaced by a drill, which is rotated by a string that
passes over the joints and does not hinder the movements of its arms.
I do not know whether this plan of making the weather maps is still
adopted. It was submitted to the _Times_ by the Meteorological Council,
through their Secretary, and I still have the first trial stereotype that
was cast on this principle. I heard that there was trouble at first in
finding a suitable soft material better than plaster of Paris and the
like, but that this difficulty of detail was soon overcome.
I have already mentioned Admiral R. FitzRoy (1805-1865). He was captain
of the surveying ship _The Beagle_, whose name became familiar to
the public through Charles Darwin’s _Voyage of the “Beagle.”_ He had
always been most zealous in the advancement of weather forecasts and
storm warnings. The “cone” was his device. A Meteorological Office
was established under his superintendence in 1854, entirely owing to
his exertions, but it was on a very small scale. His publications
unfortunately failed in scientific solidity, and were occasionally
open to serious criticism. I myself ventured to attack them in some
particulars which it is needless now to recall.
On his lamented death it was determined to reconstruct the office, and a
small Departmental Committee of the Board of Trade was named to consider
the question. It consisted of Mr., afterwards Lord, Farrer (1819-1899),
who was then the Secretary of the Board, the then Hydrographer, Captain,
afterwards Sir Frederick, Evans (1815-1885), and myself. We reported
in 1866, and I must here pay a tribute to the singular grasp and
thoroughness of Lord Farrer, whose occasional brief notes to me, in the
course of the inquiry, were models of clearness combined with cordiality.
The result was the formation of a Meteorological Committee in 1868,
of which I was a member, for giving storm warnings to seaports, for
procuring data for marine charts of weather, and for maintaining
a few standard Observatories with self-recording instruments. An
annual grant was made to meet its expenses. This avowedly provisional
arrangement worked well for some years, when it was felt that the scope
of the Meteorological Committee ought to be somewhat enlarged and its
constitution reconsidered. So a second Government Committee was appointed
by the Board of Trade and the Treasury jointly, of which I was again a
member, and in consequence of their Report the “Meteorological Committee”
was changed into the “Meteorological Council,” with an enlarged grant.
It continued in this form until 1905, a little after I had retired from
it owing to increasing deafness. It has subsequently been modified anew,
and is now under the Directorship of Dr. W. N. Shaw, with a large
governing body, whose meetings are much less frequent than those of the
Council had been, and interfere less in details.
My long connection with the able men with whom I co-operated for nearly
forty years on the Meteorological Committee and Council has given very
great pleasure to me, and I had the satisfaction in its earlier days,
when new instruments and methods were frequently called for, of being
able to do my full share of the work. I will mention only one or two
things about which I was much occupied, as examples. Part of our action
was to maintain a few well-equipped self-recording Observatories—that
is to say, where the instruments wrote down their own movements,
photographically or otherwise. For instance, a sheet of photographic
paper was moved slowly by clock-work in front of a barometer. The
barometer stood in front of a slit in a screen, with a lamp on the other
side. The light of the lamp passed freely through the empty portion
of the glass tube on to the sensitive paper, but was shut off by the
mercury. Hour lines were automatically marked upon the paper. The result
was technically called a photographic “tracing,” which showed at each
moment of time how the barometer then stood. An analogous contrivance was
adapted to every one of the other instruments.
All the instrumental data were recorded by these tracings, but they were
much too cumbrous in form and size for easy comparison. The question
then arose whether it would not be possible to reduce these voluminous
documents and print them in a compendious yearly volume. If so, the
tracings would require very much more reduction in breadth than in
height, for the photographic mark made by the recorder was so broad that
the scale of the tracing had to be proportionately wide open; otherwise
the neighbouring irregularities would blur together. A sharp line drawn
along the middle of the tracings might, however, be much compressed
laterally and yet show all the irregularities distinctly. I designed a
compound drill pantagraph for the purpose, which reduced the tracings in
height independently of the reduction in length. One part of the machine
worked the drill forward and backwards, the other part moved the plate
from side to side upon which it worked. The result was to express the
tracings by fine grooves cut into a piece of soft metal. These were again
reduced by an ordinary pantagraph. The whole process required thinking
out in numerous details, but it proved quite a success. It is described
in the annual Report of the Meteorological Office for 1869.
Squares of zinc, one for each day, were grooved by the drill pantagraph
so as to show every one of the data without confusion. They referred
to Wind Velocity and Direction, Barometric Height, Rainfall, Dry and
Wet Thermometer, together with a line to show the amount of Humidity
in the air, which was mechanically calculated from the combined traces
of the two thermometers. These squares were placed beneath a large and
beautifully designed German pantagraph, whose pointer was directed along
the grooves in the zinc, while the diamond point of the scribe scratched
the varnish on a copper plate, which was then etched by acid. The result
was to produce quarto copper plates, each containing the whole of the
instrumental data for each of the seven stations for five consecutive
days. The original tracings are reduced to the ratio of 6:1 in horizontal
and 2:1 in vertical measure. This work was steadily pursued for twelve
years, which is long enough to include a complete cycle of solar
sun-spots. The illustration is a facsimile of the upper two lines of one
page, from which the fourth and fifth days have been removed, for want of
space.
It surprises me that meteorologists have not made much more use than
they have of these comprehensive volumes. But there is no foretelling
what aspect of meteorology will be taken up by the very few earnest and
capable men who work at it. Each of them wants voluminous data arranged
in the form most convenient for his own particular inquiry.
[Illustration]
I take this opportunity of mentioning another attempt of mine which was
not brought into practice but may hereafter be useful; at all events,
it is of interest. The object was to gain some knowledge of the upper
currents of the air, such as are now being obtained by small balloons
or kites, which carry self-recording instruments. It seemed to me that
the cloud made by a bursting shell fired high in the air over the sea,
at a little frequented part of the coast, as that of West Ireland, when
no vessel was within the possibility of damage from falling fragments,
ought to give what was needed. The first questions to be answered were
as to the height to which a shell of appropriate size could be sent, the
visibility of the result, and the cost of each experiment. Sir Andrew
Noble kindly undertook to make experiments for the Office, using a
10-pounder gun that happened to be at the Armstrong Works at Elswick. It
had been designed especially for shooting at balloons, and was furnished
with the necessary spring for preventing harm from recoil. The results
were very good and consistent. The shells burst at a constant height
of about 9000 feet, and gave a conspicuous and durable cloud of smoke,
whose drift could be easily seen and its rate calculated. I designed a
camera-obscura arrangement to do this conveniently. The recorded interval
of time between the explosion as seen and as heard, was an adequate
measure of the distance of the shell-burst. It could be ascertained with
more care when desired, and in more than one way. The cost of each shot
was about ten shillings. This method of observation was not followed
up, as none of the existing stations were thought suitable, and it was
difficult to find one that would be so, considering that easy telegraphic
connection with the Meteorological Office was a necessity. Again, the
method would be useless in cloudy weather. It may possibly be of future
service for inquiries into the varying thickness of the Trade winds in
particular localities.
Yet another attempt of mine may be mentioned. Chiefly through the
initiative of Admiral FitzRoy, “Wind roses,” as they are called,
were calculated for the various Ocean districts, bounded by lines of
latitude and longitude 10 degrees apart. They formed adjacent rectangles
or “squares” in the maps used by seamen, which are always drawn on
“Mercator’s projection.” The “rose” consists of divergent spikes
directed towards each of the sixteen primary points of the compass, whose
several lengths are proportional to the frequency of winds in their
direction. A shade or other sign shows the proportion of the winds above
a specified strength. Consequently the roses afford means for judging
which of two competing courses receives, on the average, the greater
share of favourable winds. But it is no easy matter to calculate by
mother-wit the relative efficiency of the winds as expressed by roses,
upon the run of a ship along any particular course. Almost every wind
can be utilised to some degree; we want to know the aggregate effect in
the required direction of the average of the winds from all the sixteen
primary points. I showed how this could be found mechanically for any
ship whose sailing qualities were known, and suggested that “passage
roses” should be calculated for a typical vessel wherever wind roses
existed. I think this would have been taken in hand, had not steam begun
to largely supersede sails, and was doing so at a rapidly increasing rate.
I was rather scandalised by finding how little was known to nautical men
of the sailing qualities of their own ships, along each of the sixteen
points of the compass, assuming a moderate sea, and a moderate wind
blowing steadily from one direction. I think, if I had a yacht, that this
would be the first point I should wish to ascertain in respect to her
performances.
When the Meteorological Council was established, its first President
was that most accomplished classical scholar, as well as mathematician,
Professor Henry Smith (1826-1883) of Oxford, to whose memory the highest
tributes have been paid, notably by Sir Mountstuart E. Grant Duff. It was
delightful to watch his facility in dealing with difficulties, whether of
administration or expression. The Chairman usually has to remain in the
Office after the meetings are closed to write letters connected with what
has just been transacted. The Secretary, Mr. Robert Scott, was of course
present at those times, and he told me of a peculiarity of Henry Smith
that I should never have guessed, namely, that when an important letter
had to be written, it was his habit to begin by filling a half-sheet and
then tearing it up to begin afresh. I myself am very familiar with the
way in which the mind settles itself while writing the address and date
and the “Dear Sir,” but should have thought from the exceptional rapidity
of the ordinary working of Henry Smith’s mind that he would have been the
last person to need a long pause to give his ideas time to crystallise.
Notwithstanding his multifarious duties and interests, he worked hard at
the inquiries of the moment. In one of these I was closely associated
with him, namely, in an attempt to analyse the extremely complex
system of ocean currents round the Cape and up the West Coast of South
Africa. They admit of being identified and distinguished partly by
their direction and partly by their temperature. Volumes of cold water
coming from the direction of the South Pole sometimes plunge far below
the surface and reappear in the midst of an otherwise unbroken surface
current.
It was a great shock and grief to us all when, without previous
forewarning, intelligence reached us of Henry Smith’s death, after a
brief but singularly painful illness in 1883.
We all looked to General, afterwards Sir Richard, Strachey (1817-1908) to
succeed him, which he did. He too has died only two days before I write
these lines. A prominent place ought to be given to him in my “Memories,”
for we have been connected in our pursuits very frequently and in
very different ways. He was one of the hardest and most unobtrusive
of workers, who exercised a powerful influence in many great matters,
especially in India, but shrank from publicity and ostentation. Like
most master minds, he had a characteristic way of looking at things that
is hard to describe. It often led to his taking an unpopular side in
discussions, though by treating the question very clearly from his own
point of view he caused his opinion to be at last accepted. He has been a
steadfast friend to me throughout my life. I cannot refrain from quoting
the official letter he wrote as Chairman of the Meteorological Council,
when I resigned my seat, it is so gracefully and kindly expressed.
“METEOROLOGICAL OFFICE
_May 9, 1901_
“DEAR MR. GALTON,—The new body of Directors of the Office held
their first meeting on Wednesday, 24th April. In the letter
from the Royal Society notifying their appointment, there was a
paragraph intimating that the resignation of your seat on the
Council had been accepted.
“It was only natural that the first act of the new body should
be to recall the long period during which you have occupied
a seat either on the original Meteorological Committee or
the Council, and to endorse, with the emphasis arising from
their full knowledge of your work, the appreciation which the
President and Council of the Royal Society recorded in their
letter.
“It therefore becomes a duty, by which I am no little
honoured, to convey to you the feeling of the Council upon the
termination of your official services as a Member of the body
on which we have so long worked together. This task I undertake
with a full sense of the difficulty of adequately expressing
the extent to which the work of the Meteorological Office is
indebted for its success and utility to your services, which
have extended over thirty-four years.
“It is no exaggeration to say that almost every room in the
Office and all its records give unmistakable evidence of the
active share you have always taken in the direction of the
operations of the Office. The Council feel that the same high
order of intelligence and inventive faculty has characterised
your scientific work in Meteorology that has been so
conspicuous in many other directions, and has long become known
and appreciated in all centres of intellectual activity.
“With the Office entering upon a new phase of its service
to the public, it is impossible for the Council not to feel
that the work of the past thirty-four years has only opened
the way, as all good work does, for further development. I am
confident that you will still be interested in the success of
the undertaking in which you have had so great a share, and
the Council will value in the future, as they have done in the
past, any suggestion you may make about the work of the Office.
“Believe me, very faithfully yours,
“(Sgd.) RICHARD STRACHEY, _Chairman_”
It is needless to say more than that I was greatly touched by this
letter. I was also so much impressed with its literary skill, that on
calling shortly after on Sir Richard I begged him, as a matter about
which I felt curious on purely literary grounds, to tell me its origin.
He said that it was really his own writing, though based on a draft
prepared at the Office, and added, “And it is all strictly true.” Persons
are to be envied who can express their feelings so gracefully as in that
letter.