Show volunteers al aid d weather e r 7 bureau army of men and women supplies data for climatic research washington A recent symposium of the american meteorological so eo clety discussed the comparatively little known but highly important work of the thousands of men and women who net act asun ns unpaid pall co ob servers of the united states weather bureau thanks to tho services of these persons daily weather went lier records aa are maintained nt at nearly places 14 in this country and in many cases the records have been kept with harl ily lya a break biank for CO years or more hy hv tin sin in individual observer or by members of tho the slim saino family faintly these records are not noc utilized in connection with f forecasting ore casting and are therefore not reported by telegraph at the end of each month the reg register lster of 66 observations serva Js Is forwarded ar ded by mull mail to ahe he state i section benfer center of tile the weather bureau there it Is chocked checked and revised and the detailed results are published tn in a monthly ly bulletin letin eventually the game data serve as the raw material from which climatic statistics are prepared for all parts of the country supplies instruments the bureau supplies to each observer ser ver a rain gouge it maxi maximum thermometer for registering the high temperatures est of the day a minimum thermometer which registers the lowest and a wooden ther eair screen or shelter in w which tile the thermometers are ard I 1 shaded from direct sunshine but exposed to a free circulation cu of air the observer reads his instruments once a day usually about sunset and enters the readings in his i eraster eg lster together with a record of various special weather events such as frosts thunderstorms thunder storms sturms tornadoes auroras and optical phenomena while the total time ahrie devoted to such observations Is not great the necessity of an unbroken record day after day year in anil and year out Is no slight test of the lie observers fl fidelity delity it seems remarkable that the government Is able to obtain tile the services of a sufficient number of suitably qualified persons to perform tills this dally daily tusk task however keeping weather records appears to exercise a special tor for ninny many people and wits was pursued as n hobby long before the days of organized meteorology the earliest dally weather journal now extant Is one that was kept by the lie rev william merle in england during the sears ears 1334 1137 george washington record george washington kept a detailed account of the weather along with the tb e happenings of tile the day ills his ng ag ri cultural and other experiments and a record of his guests in ills clary called tutor later where and ilow how aly time Is spent ula ills attention to lie weather was waa most particular rind when away he would have it 11 record kept nud and on his return would incorporate it tit in ills hla hook book it Is bel believed bellivell levell that alint tits hla purpose tn in keeping tills this weather record was to araw draw conclusions as to the best time thue for planting crops the weather record for 1760 for instance was kept on blank pages of the virginin virginia almanac a compendium that contains directions f for r making In indico dleo for curing bloody flux for making its as pleasant as a dish dash of chipel chocolate inte for making a striking sundi sun di daal 11 all A ite ile celpa to keep ones self worm warm a whole winter with it single billet of wood many other persons outside tile ranks of professional meteor oln Is ts have kept similar chronicles there was a cleverand Cleve fand octogenarian who for 67 57 years kept a record twice a n day of the thermometer and barometer on bringing ills big ledgers to t tile the meeting of the western reserve historical society however he was asked what conclusions lie he had find drawn as a result of his investigations nothing but tills this he replied that cleveland weather Is only constant in its inconstancy started by smithsonian tho the work of the present corps of operative cooperative co observers continues that of several earlier organizations tn in this country tile the most important or nf which was that of tile the smithsonian dating from the year ISIS by the close of 1841 the smithsonian was obtaining weather records from about volunteer observers in different parts of the country and the lie number eventually increased to about this system wits was transferred to the signal service abe predecessor of the weather bureau in 1873 in 1876 professor of iowa organized a weather cervice in his state and a few years later stute state weather ices were organized throughout the country under the general direction of the signal set service vice the separate state services were later merged into a 11 single federal organization forming tile the service set vice of the vent lier bureau except in lown and Ain ryland where the services are still partly under state control |