Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/310

292 solid and coherent facts of nature, all ready to be put together and worked up by the meteorologist into a noble and useful science.

Having noticed the first attempt ever made to establish a system of "Simultaneous weather-reports," and indicated the unique character of the system, as carried out by the United States since 1870, we hasten on to the history of its extension to the vast field of international meteorology. In September, 1873, the International Meteorological Congress was convened at Vienna, to consider all the graver questions that were then agitating public and private investigators, as to the progress of weather-science. The Congress was composed of official representatives, charged with the meteorlogical duties pertaining to the researches of their respective Governments. It was then proposed by the representative of the United States, General Myer, that it is desirable, with a view to their exchange, that at least one uniform observation, of such character as to be suited for the preparation of synoptic charts, be taken and recorded daily and simultaneously at as many stations as practicable throughout the world." This proposition was unanimously concurred in, and its hearty adoption by the Congress, the members of which virtually legislated for the nations they represented, at once secured the extension of the American "simultaneous" system (as inaugurated in 1870 for the United States) to the entire field of weather investigation then covered or yet to be covered by the observers of all the nations. Soon after the adoption of this proposition at Vienna, by the courteous cooperation of scientific men and the chiefs of the meteorological weather-bureaus of the different countries, records of uniform observations, taken daily and simultaneously with the observations taken over the United States and the adjacent islands,