THE COMPANIES AND THE WEATHER

Weather has been preoccupation of the British for centuries. Britain has “more weather” than most countries, its seasons are less stable and the seasonal elements more subject to violent change than continental climates. The weather was clearly vital to Britain’s core economies of agriculture and overseas trade, particularly when shipping was primarily driven by sail. Its study has occupied men and women in both rural and urban communities to a surprising degree; as  nineteenth century investigators gradually revealed the existence of an immense regional meteorological archive.

This preoccupation was such that during November 1848, within two years of its creation, the Electric Telegraph Company was sending “weather reports from above forty places in England” to its private subscription news-rooms in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Leeds, London, Manchester and Newcastle.

And then the ‘Daily News’ in London, of which Charles Dickens was the first if short-lived editor, began publishing the first regular public weather reports in June 1849. These reports were collected from correspondents on a printed form and forwarded to London by railway express.

It soon became clear to the many individuals interested in the weather that the systematic collection of data, initially for weather maps and then for actual weather forecasts, could be made possible by the electric telegraph, by which data from many distant parts could be brought to one place for analysis in minutes.

In addition to this realisation, new organisation was being applied to meteorological science; on April 3, 1850 the British Meteorological Society was founded in succession to two previous organisations, one dating from 1823. It was not itself a large body growing gradually from 170 members in 1851 to 200 in 1856 and 300 in 1864; drawn from science and the professions, and including several women, but it was to have great influence. Its organising  power was its secretary James Glaisher, the Superintendent of Magnetism and Meteorology at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. 

 A surprising number of people connected with the telegraph were members of the Meteorological Society by 1862; William Andrews of the United Kingdom company, C T Bright of the Magnetic company, E B Bright of the Magnetic, Samuel Canning of the Atlantic Telegraph, Edwin Clark of the Electric company, Latimer Clark of the Electric, R S Culley of the Electric, J S Fourdrinier of the Electric, Nathaniel Holmes of the Universal company, R S Newall, the submarine cable maker, Julius Reuter, J O N Rutter, who introduced the electric burglar and fire alarm, S W Silver, the maker of cables and insulators, and C V Walker, the telegraphic superintendent of the South Eastern railway who had been a member from its foundation.

At the Great Exhibition of 1851, inspired by this new interest in meteorology, the Electric Telegraph Company used its circuits to collect the wind direction, the state of the weather and the state the barometer from sixty-four places about the country at the Crystal Palace at 9am each day between August 8 and October 11, 1851 and recorded them on a great meteorological chart with moveable symbols and arrows displayed on its stand. The Company also printed its Weather Map every day on a press by the chart and sold them to visitors for 1d a copy.

Then in 1859 Admiral Robert Fitzroy introduced a system of Meteorological Telegrams. Weather readings from the coasts along an area bounded by Nairn, Helder and Skuddernaes in the north and north-east, by L’Orient and Rochefort in the south, and by Galway, Valentia and Cape Clear in the west were collected twice a day and telegraphed to a Meteorological Office in London. Here they were inscribed on maps and weather patterns determined. This enabled a day or even two days notice before dangerous winds reached the British seas and ports, as Fitzroy declared ‘forecasting the weather’.

Each of the fifteen international coastal reporting stations was equipped with a standard barometer, a wind vane, a dry thermometer and a wet thermometer. At 8am and 1pm every day the station master would transmit the readings of these instruments to London reduced to six groups of five figures. This compressed data included current air pressure, dry temperature, wet temperature, direction of wind, force of wind, cloud, character of weather and sea disturbance, as well as changes since the last report in the direction of wind, highest or lowest temperatures and air pressures.

As the system developed by 1860 ‘The Times’ newspaper was publishing daily weather forecasts, and by 1861 the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade was co-ordinating the world’s first weather service. It was a modest organisation for collecting and diffusing weather data; its annual budget was just £4,600 and the department employed ten people; a scientific officer, an office manager, a telegraphic clerk, a reductions and discussions clerk, a records and stores clerk, a translation clerk, a meteorological instrument clerk, an optical instrument clerk and two messengers.

Each day except Sunday, during 1862 it was receiving 20 domestic weather reports each morning, 10 additional reports each afternoon and 5 reports from Europe.

The Meteorological Department issued daily weather forecasts and “double forecasts”, two-days in advance, to six daily newspapers, a weekly newspaper, Lloyd’s shipping insurance market, the Admiralty, the Horse Guards (head-quarters of the Army) and the Board of Trade.

The meteorological instruments, barometer, wind vane and two thermometers, for collecting the data were placed in the care of the clerks of the Electric, Magnetic and Submarine Telegraph Companies. The clerks “gradually and well acquired the duties asked for (then perfectly new), which are now continued with extremely creditable regularity and precision”. The Companies’ clerks  read the instruments and transmitted the short cipher groups summarising the data twice a day to the Meteorological Department.

The Coast Guard of the Admiralty in 1862 on receiving this information exhibited “cautionary symbols” in public places at 130 coastal towns, up from 50 in the previous year. It issued Storm Warnings to ports by telegraph, instructing them to hoist signals in the form of cones and drums on prominent sea-front masts and yards to warn mariners of anticipated foul weather. The Storm Signals were remarkably effective in saving lives and hulls, but were later abandoned as fishermen and other sea-goers objected to the disruption of trade.

In competition with the Meteorological Department, as a free public service, the Electric Telegraph Company introduced a Wind & Weather Map at its domestic offices in January 1861 featuring twenty-three coast stations each with a coloured disc attached on which were printed the points-of-the-compass and indicators of the wind and weather, fine, strong, rain, and so on. The disc had two rotating hands, one red indicating the wind direction, one white showing the state of the weather. Every day at 8am the twenty-three stations telegraphed their wind and weather to the Central Station where the information was collated and distributed to the several offices for their maps by 10am.