







































 

   

 

Corresponding author(s)  

Kerby C. Alvarez, Department of History, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, 

University of the Philippines Diliman, kcalvarez@up.edu.ph. 

 

 

 

 

Scientific Textualizations of Tropical Cyclones in the Philippines: The 

Scientific Activities of the Observatorio Meteorológico de Manila (OMM) 

and Philippine Weather Bureau (PWB), 1860s-1940s 

 

 

Kerby Alvarez 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction: Philippine Tropical Cyclones and Typhoons as Subject of Historical 

Research 

Meteorological observatories are concrete indicators of the bourgeoning modern 

atmospheric science in the nineteenth century. Meteorology played a role in advancing safer 

seafaring and lessening the losses during wreckage due to storms and typhoons in the seas. The 

relative success of several colonial societies in further expanding their presence on the high 

seas through modern shipping, faster communication through telegraphy, and the growing 

inter-island scientific knowledge exchange contributed to the creation of modern societies that 

served as a stepping stone of other political and economic expansion endeavours. These 

developments paved the way for the creation of a semi-invisible dynamic line of 

communication and knowledge production circulation network in the Pacific region. In his 

extensive studies about the work of the Jesuits on the development of tropical cyclone and 

typhoon prediction, Anduaga (2014, 2017, 2019, 2020a, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c) has illustrated 

the complex and dynamic conundrum of pioneering local scientific research initiatives, 

collaborative knowledge production, and regional and global knowledge network-building.1 

 

1 Aitor Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits in the Philippines: Geophysical Research and Synergies between Science, Education and 

Trade, 1865-1898.” Annals of Science 71, no. 4 (2014): 497-521; Aitor Anduaga, Cyclones and Earthquakes: The Jesuits, 

Prediction, Trade, & Spanish Dominion in Cuba & the Philippines, 1850-1898 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University 

Press, 2017); Aitor Anduaga, “History of Typhoon Science,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Climate Science (26 April 2019) ); Aitor 

Anduaga, “Los Jesuitas y el estudio de los tifones en Filipinas, 1865-1899” Illes i Imperis 22 (2020): 63-83; Aitor Anduaga, 

Politics, Statistics and Weather Forecasting, 1840-1910: Taming the Weather (London: Routledge, 2020b); Aitor Anduaga, 

“Epistemic Network: The Jesuits and Tropical Cyclone Prediction, 1860-1900.” Isis 113(3): 513-536; Aitor Anduaga, “Red 

de Conocimiento: Los Jesuitas, las ciencias de Observatorio y su Evolución en España y Ultramar, 1855-1905,” Hispania 

mailto:kcalvarez@up.edu.ph


 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

2 

 

 

Coinciding and maximizing its contemporary technological developments such as inter-island 

telegraphic exchange and enhanced global shipping, the quantification of weather-related 

scientific work and centralization of knowledge transmission and dissemination enabled the 

robust growth of meteorology as a vital science for social and economic activities.2 Moreover, 

the waves of scientific developments in the late nineteenth century facilitated the growth of 

formalized and localized sciences.3 Global and local colonial dynamics suggested the invention 

of “colonial science” in the peripheral territories, in contrast to the usual structure of knowledge 

production wherein ideas originated from European countries and moved to their colonies. In 

the case of the Philippines, the Observatorio Meteorológico de Manila (OMM) and later, the 

Philippine Weather Bureau (PWB) served as the primary movers of the institutionalization of 

meteorology as a relevant and useful field of scientific endeavor in the Philippines from the 

late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.  

In the past 20 years, studies in the field of environmental history have highlighted the 

critical appreciation of hazards and disasters as important events and turning points in Filipino 

society. For example, the perennial experience of the Philippine archipelago to tropical 

cyclones and typhoons has garnered more robust attention from historians, and studying them 

from a historical point of view serves as a springboard to a more diverse and expansive inquiry 

in environmental history, touching well-related fields such as institutional and intellectual 

history. A survey of select historical studies provides a picture of the current state-of-the-arts 

on the subject of historical tropical cyclones and typhoons. Scientific agencies and knowledge 

production in the Philippines from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century saw a 

period of instrumentation, localized institutionalization, overseas network expansion, and 

“Filipinization.”4 These developments served as the historical backdrop in how scientific 

initiatives to understand a variety of atmospheric disturbances and phenomena. Two categories 

can be drawn from the historical studies on tropical cyclones and typhoons in the Philippines: 

(1) works dealing with the institutional activities and initiatives in meteorology, and (2) 

scholarly works that historicize tropical cyclone and typhoon experiences in the Philippine 

setting. 

In the first category, in the case of studies on the nature and science of typhoons, the 

period had been dominated by the scientific efforts of the Jesuits in the Philippines and the 

institutional initiatives and networking they pursued. Anduaga (2011, 2014, 2017, 2020a, 

2020b, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c) has set the historiographical landscape on the studies of Jesuit 

research on typhoons, their institutional activities, and their regional and global legacies as 

movers of meteorological research.5 His work covers the nucleus of contemporary historical 

 

Sacra 74 (2022): 231-246; Aitor Anduaga, “Transnational Co-production of Knowledge of Typhoon Warning Codes in the 

Far East, 1900-1039.” Minerva 60 (2022): 301-323. 

2 Anduaga, Politics, Statistics and Weather Forecasting, 1840–1910, 3; Katharine Anderson, Predicting the Weather: 

Victorians and the Science of Meteorology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 1–2. 

3 David Wade Chambers and Richard Gillespie, “Locality in the History of Science: Colonial Science, Technoscience, and the 

Indigenous Knowledge,” Osiris 15 (Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise), 230. 

4 Alberto Elena and Javier Ordoñez, “Science, Technology, and the Spanish Colonial Experience in the Nineteenth Century,” 

Osiris 15 (2020): 70-82; Warwick Anderson, “Science in the Philippines,” Philippine Studies 55, no.3 (2000): 287-218; 

Jonathan Baldoza, “Under the Aegis of Science: The Philippine Scientific Community before the Second World War.” 

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 68, no.1 (2020): 81-110; Francisco Jayme Paolo Guiang, “The 

Development of Colonial Science and the Council under American Tutelage, 1933-1941.” in A History of the National 

Research Council of the Philippines: Research in the Life of the Nation, ed. Francis A. Gealogo (Taguig: National Research 

Council of the Philippines, 2021): 7-32 

5 Aitor Anduaga, Meteorológia, Ideología y Sociedad en la España Contemporánea (Madrid: Consejo Superior de 

Investigaciones Científicas, 2011); Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits in the Philippines,”; Anduaga, Cyclones and Earthquakes; 

Anduaga, “Los Jesuitas e el estudio de los tifones en Filipinas,”; Anduaga, Politics, Statistics and Weather forecasting, 1840-



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

3 

 

 

literature on the subject matter. As a supplement to this historiographical observation, Alvarez 

(2016, 2024) adds that the scientific work of the Jesuits in the Philippines can be characterized 

as pioneering scientific activities that used novel instruments, the institutionalization of work, 

and external networking as primary framework to pursue their scientific and administrative 

objectives.6 Moreover, the work of Udias (2019) also illustrates the aforementioned opinion as 

he presents a capsule discussion of the institutional history of Jesuit observatories and 

highlights the research, pedagogy, and worldwide network of observatories the order has 

established for two centuries.7 Furthermore, Garcia-Herrera, et. al (2007) presents a “high-

resolution chronology of typhoons and intense storms occurring in the Philippine Islands and 

their vicinity for the period 1566–1900,” using the catalogue of Father Miguel P. Selga, former 

director of the Philippine Weather Bureau (1927-1941).8 In the second category, there is also 

an expansive literature on the historical study of the political and socio-cultural impacts and 

meanings attributed to Philippine tropical cyclone and typhoon experiences. Bankoff (2003, 

2004, 2006, 2007) has significantly contributed to shaping this approach to historical disasters 

in the Philippines.9 Warren (2013, 2016) also ventured into the historical study of typhoons, 

underscoring the political economy of typhoon disasters.10 In his recent work, Warren (2024) 

presents a comprehensive examination of “historicizing typhoons” in the Philippines, 

presenting it in a framework correlating institution-knowledge production, typhoon intensity, 

state responses, and contemporary issues related to typhoon disasters.11 

Building on the mentioned past studies about typhoons in the Philippines, this work 

examines the scientific efforts of the OMM and PWB, analyzing their work and initiatives as 

forms of scientific textualizations on these storms. Drawing from Anduaga’s (2014, 2020a, 

2022a, 2022b, and 2022c)12 studies on the work of the Jesuits on tropical cyclones and 

typhoons, this work attempts to supplement the historical literature about the subject and argues 

based on the mentioned approach. The scientific textualizations came in various forms: local 

data collection, the publication of scientific work, and external and regional scientific 

partnerships. From understanding their genesis, tracing their origins, and tracking their 

movements and impacts on human settlements, the OMM and the PWB spearheaded 

instrumentation and institutional efforts to produce knowledge about atmospheric disturbances 

 

1910; Anduaga, “Epistemic Network,”; Anduaga, “Red de Conocimiento,”; Anduaga, “Transnational Co-production of 

Knowledge.” 

6 Kerby Alvarez, “Instrumentation and Institutionalization: Colonial Science and the Observatorio Meteorológico de Manila, 

1865-1899,” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 64, nos. 3-4 (2016): 385-416; Kerby Alvarez, “A 

History of Institutional Meteorology in the Philippines, 1865-1972,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science (17 

April 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.942. 

7 Agustín Udías, “Jesuits and the Natural Sciences in Modern Times, 1814-2014,” Jesuit Studies 1.3, 2019: 1-104. 

8 Ricardo García-Herrera, Pedro Ribera, Emiliano. Hernández, and Luis Gimeno, “Northwest Pacific Typhoons documented 

by the Philippine Jesuits, 1566–1900,” Journal of Geophysical Research 112 (2007): 1-12. 

https://doi.org/10.1029/2006JD007370.  

9 Greg Bankoff, Cultures of Disaster: Society and Natural in the Philippines (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); Greg Bankoff, 

“In The Eye of Storm: The Social Construction of the Forces of Nature and the Climatic and Seismic Construction of God in 

the Philippines,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no.1 (2004): 91-111; Greg Bankoff, “Winds of Colonization: The 

Meteorological Contours of Spain’s Imperium in the Pacific, 1521-1898,” Environment and History 12 (2006): 65-99; Greg 

Bankoff, “Bodies on the Beach: Domesticates and Disasters in the Spanish Philippines, 1750-1898,” Environment and History 

13(3), 2007: 285-306. 

10 James Francis Warren, “A Tale of Two Decades: Typhoons and Floods, Manila and the Provinces, and the Marcos Years,” 

The Asia Pacific Journal 11.43 (3): 1-21; James Francis Warren, “Typhoons and the Inequalities of Philippine Society and 

History,” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 64, nos. 3-4 (2016):  455-472. 

11 James Francis Warren, Typhoons: Climate, Society, and History in the Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila 

University Press, 2024).  

12 Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits in the Philippines”; Anduaga, “Los Jesuitas e el estudio de los tifones en Filipinas”; Anduaga, 

“Epistemic Network”; Anduaga, “Red de Conocimiento”; Anduaga, “Transnational Co-production of Knowledge.” 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

4 

 

 

primarily affecting the Philippine archipelago and the larger Pacific region. The scientific work 

and activities of these institutions laid down the foundation of meteorological infrastructure in 

the Philippines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and they became active, 

albeit controversial, scientific institutions in the region. 

 

The Jesuits and their Research Work on Tropical Cyclones 

The Establishment of the OMM and PWB 

The introduction of institutional meteorology in the Philippines followed the return of 

the Jesuits in the Pacific from their banishment from the archipelago from 1768 to 1859. This 

signalled the propagation of new forms of scientific knowledge and the proliferation of a more 

public character of science, through the establishment of mission observatories and 

introduction of novel scientific instrument. The Jesuits’ passion for atmospheric sciences, 

rooted in their engagement with progressive scientists and institutions in Europe, paved the 

way for new scientific advancements in the Philippines. The Philippine archipelagic 

environment served as a new ground for the Jesuits’ application of their expertise in the natural 

sciences, specifically in meteorology. The mission’s long-established scientific tradition is 

grounded in their advocacy of spiritual and scientific development through schools, 

universities, and observatories.13 In his study on the Jesuit scholarly tradition, Harris (1989) 

transposes various ideas to present a significant overview: (1) Robert Merton’s sociological 

postulate of societal pressure, (2) Rivka Feldhay’s study of “Jesuit ideology” as the foundation 

of values and missionary work, and (3) the concept of “apostolic spirituality.”14 A critical 

reading of his work leads us to the understanding of the Jesuits’ pursuit and the legitimation of 

scientific work as acts of pursuing their missionary work. In an earlier exegesis, Teilhard de 

Chardin (1968) considers their deep involvement in a multitude of scientific fields as the 

realization of their use of research to understand God’s creations.15 Harris (1989) further adds 

that it is contradictory to juxtapose “science” and “Jesuits,” as the quest to “discern underlying 

patterns of coherence in the hope of finding how the pieces fit together” is profoundly 

embedded in their system.16 In a more recent scholarly analyses, Anduaga (2022a, 2022b, 

2022c) has given historical emphasis on the significance of the established knowledge 

networks on meteorology resulting from the proactive research enterprise of the Jesuits.17 

In January 1865, a small, make-shift observation facility was built in one of the 

buildings of the Ateneo Municipal de Manila and was devoted to daily weather observations 

and data collection. It ran for months doing the routine task of observation and documentation, 

until a typhoon passed by Manila in September 1865. The Jesuits supervising the laboratory, 

José Colina and Jaime Nonell, decided to work with the information they had collected about 

the typhoon and publish a study in one of Manila’s dailies, the Diario de Manila.18 The report 

 

13 Agustín Udías, “Jesuits’ contribution to meteorology,” Bulletin of American Meteorological Society 77, no. 10 (1996), 

2308.; Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits”, 505–6.  

14 Steven Harris, “Transposing the Merton thesis: Apostolic spirituality and the establishment of Jesuit scientific tradition,’ 

Science in Context 3, no. 1 (2008): 29–32. 

15 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, ‘The religious value of research,’ in Science and Christ, trans. Rene Hague (New York: Harper 

& Row, Publishers, 1968), 201. 

16 Steven Harris, “Confession-Building, Long-Distance Networks, and the Organization of Jesuit Science,” Early Science and 

Medicine 1, no. 3 (1996), 289.  

17 Anduaga, “Epistemic Network,”; Anduaga, “Red de Conocimiento,”; Anduaga, “Transnational Co-production of 

Knowledge.” 

18 John Schumacher, “One Hundred Years of Jesuit Scientists: The Manila Observatory 1865–1965,” Philippine Studies 13, 

no. 2 (1965), 259. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

5 

 

 

captured the attention of some of Manila’s residents. Merchants and seafarers asked the Jesuit 

Superior, Father Juan Vidal, to instruct the Jesuits in Manila to continue taking weather 

observations and provide them with additional ideas about typhoons, as well as typhoon 

warnings. The Jesuit leadership in the Philippines responded positively to the merchants’ 

request, and, in return, the merchants offered financial aid to purchase new and better 

instruments from abroad. Schumacher (1965) considers this work of the Manila Jesuits to have 

been “an immense humanitarian service to the Philippines.”19 From then on, the laboratory 

became known as the OMM. In 1866, Federico Faura, a Jesuit scholastic, arrived in Manila to 

head the work of the weather observation facility in the Ateneo.20 He led the facility for five 

years, before returning to Spain to complete his priesthood education, as well as to familiarize 

himself with the methods employed by European weather observatories.21 Under Faura’s 

directorship, the OMM conducted weather observation and daily documentation mostly 

centered in the vicinity of the city of Manila, which gradually revealed its potential to support 

Manila’s maritime and trading sectors. The OMM’s emerging public engagement resulted in 

the realization of the Spanish colonial state’s aim to make it part of the government structure. 

In 1880, the colonial government formed a commission composed of the various Spanish civil 

departments, the Spanish Navy in the Philippines, the Spanish government-controlled 

telegraph company, and the Jesuits to draft a proposal to transform the OMM into a state 

meteorological service (servicio meteorológico).22 After years of the gruelling bureaucracy of 

the Overseas Ministry in Madrid, the colonial government in Manila succeeded in its plan. In 

1884, King Alfonso XII issued a royal decree declaring the OMM as the official meteorological 

service of the colony and directing the colonial government to place it under direct 

administrative management and appropriate funds for its expansion.23  

The Jesuits’ centuries-long network of mission activities made them efficient 

facilitators of inter-institutional scientific communication and engagements. A great example 

of this was their network of observatories studying tropical disturbances in various parts of the 

world: Belen in Cuba, Tananarive in Zimbabwe, Zikawei in China, and Manila in the 

Philippines.24 The Jesuits’ objectives in pursuing this network fall into two categories: (1) to 

institutionalize their passions in meteorology and astronomy, and (2) to study the nature and 

tracks of huracanes (hurricanes) in the Caribbean and tifones (typhoons) in the Pacific.25 In 

Europe and the Antilles, Fathers Angelo Secchi, Stephen Perry, and Benito Viñes were among 

the Jesuit scientists who specialized in the invention of new meteorological instruments. The 

existence of the Jesuits’ mission networks in different parts of the globe enabled the circulation 

not only of theological activities but also of their scientific studies, communications, and 

instrument familiarity. On the Pacific side, the Jesuits in Manila brought in the archipelago 

instruments invented and used by their European and Caribbean colleagues. The bulk of the 

money they received from private donors was used to purchase instruments from Europe, such 

as Secchi’s invention, the universal meteorograph. The Jesuits in the OMM, though initially 

reliant on European inventions, also made instruments designed to measure precisely 

 

19 Ibid.  

20 William Repetti, The Manila Observatory, Manila, Philippines, 2. 

21 Repetti, The Manila Observatory, 13; Schumacher, “One Hundred Years of Jesuit Scientists,” 259. 

22 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 74.  

23 “Establecimiento y organización de un servicio meteorológico en las Islas Filipinas,”’ Ultramar, 603, Expediente 14, 

1890/1897, Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Madrid, Spain; Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 79–81. 

24 Udías, “Jesuits’ contribution to meteorology,” 2309. 

25 Miguel Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, fundado y dirigido por los Padres de la Misión de la Compañía 

de Jesús de Filipinas, 1865–1915 (Manila: E. C. McCullough, 1915), 24.  

http://pares.mcu.es/ParesBusquedas/servlets/Control_servlet?accion=3&txt_id_desc_ud=3531372&fromagenda=N


 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

6 

 

 

meteorological conditions and disturbances in the Philippine archipelago. The traditional 

framework of colonial science, wherein the periphery frequently plays the role of the receiver 

of development from the metropole26 was not wholly applicable in the case of the Jesuits and 

the OMM in Manila. For example, they collected and published weather data in newspapers in 

Manila; and they wrote scientific reports about certain atmospheric disturbances such as 

tropical cyclones, and these were used and cited by European travellers in their respective 

scientific memoirs and travel accounts. This knowledge production aligns with another colonial 

science framework wherein formalized and localized sciences cemented the dual approach of 

scientific development in the colonies, as well as the fulfillment of the colonial vision of 

integrating the colonized peoples into the institutions of modernity.27  

The OMM’s work on weather forecasting and public advisories expanded in the latter 

part of the 1860s and continued until the 1880s due to the influx of financial support from 

businesses who are into inter-island shipping and foreign commercial trading, owned by 

Spanish and Chinese mestizos, and European and American entrepreneurs.28 As Anduaga 

(2014) argues, this was the “exogenous commercial element”29 of the mutual relationship 

between the OMM and the commercial sector. On the one side, the OMM provided weather 

forecasts, and on the other, businesses gave financial donations that were used for the 

maintenance and improvement of facilities of the OMM.30 The OMM relied heavily on 

donations to purchase instruments from abroad. For example, donations received after the 

OMM’s first typhoon warnings of 1865 were used to purchase instruments such as the Secchi’s 

meteorógrafo universal, which enabled the continuous recording of meteorological 

observations.31 In 1877, 88 wealthy families and businesses contributed to the construction of 

a new building in the Ermita district of Manila, outside the walled city of Intramuros (Fig. 1).32 

Aside from direct monetary donations, the OMM also received funds from newspaper 

companies that published their daily weather reports, since their sales increased due to the 

subscriptions made by individuals and companies who wanted to receive weather information. 

The OMM not only attracted the attention of Manila’s business sector, it also gained popularity 

among international shipping and trading companies and diplomatic officials because of its 

work in regional weather monitoring and forecasting, as well as the studies it produced about 

the typhoons in the China Sea and the western Pacific. As a reflection of their commitment to 

the shipping and trading sectors, the Jesuits of the OMM launched them to markets in the 

Philippines and abroad, like in Europe and Hong Kong. In January 1886, Father Faura 

presented to the scientific community in the Philippines and Spain his version of an aneroid 

barometer, contextualized in the Philippine archipelagic setting (Fig. 2).33 Four years later, it 

was widely sought after by merchants, traders, collectors, and wealthy people.34 Local 

merchants were able to buy this device, which they used at ports, or while at the sea; but some 

 

26 George Basalla, “The spread of Western Science.” Science 156, no. 3775 (05 May 1967), 613. 

27 Chambers and Gillespie, “Locality in the history of science,” 230; Robert Peckham, “Disease and Medicine,” in John M. 

MacKenzie (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Empire (John Wiley and Sons, 2016), 7. 

28 Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits in the Philippines,” 504–5. 

29 Ibid., p. 503. 

30 Repetti, The Manila Observatory, 1; Schumacher, “One Hundred Years of Jesuit Scientists,” 259; Saderra Masó, Historia 

del Observatorio de Manila, 27. 

31 Ibid.  

32 Schumacher, “One Hundred Years of Jesuit Scientists,” 261; Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 170–71. 

33 Federico Faura, El barómetro aneroide aplicado a la previsión del tiempo en el Archipiélago filipino (Manila: Imprenta y 

Litografía de M. Perez, 1886); Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 96. 

34 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 96.  



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

7 

 

 

wealthy families used them as house displays. In late 1897, Father José Algué’35 marketed his 

invention, the barocyclonometer, an attempt to combine the properties of Father Faura’s 

aneroid barometer and Father Benito Viñes’ cyclonoscope (1888), an invention made to detect 

Caribbean cyclonic movements (Fig. 2).36 

Fig. 1. The main building of the OMM from the 1880s up to its destruction in the 

 Battle of Manila in February 1945. Image courtesy of the Manila Observatory 

 Library and Archives Website: http://archives.observatory.ph/files/photos/1 

 -Prewar/1_01.jpg  

Algué’s invention was initially discussed in his 1895 work Baguios ó Tifones del 1894: Estudio 

de los mismos seguido de algunas consideraciones generals acerca de los caracteres de estos 

meteorós en el Extremo Oriente.37 The institutional seals of the OMM (from 1865 to 1901) and 

the PWB (from 1901 to 1945) were based on various types of weather barometers, a Torricelli 

mercury barometer, and an aneroid barometer (Fig. 3). Although the OMM benefitted from the 

said revenue streams, it also received financial support from the Spanish colonial government 

in Manila, especially for large projects, such as the establishment of secondary stations. In 

1887, the colonial government laid out a plan for a network comprising a central station and 

13 secondary stations scattered in key geographical posts on the island of Luzon. Once built, 

 

35 José Algué was a Spanish Jesuit who became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1871. He studied theology in France, and 

later, mathematics and astronomy at Georgetown University, under the supervision of Father John Hagen. He was a constant 

companion of Father Faura on their research trips abroad and led various scientific missions in the Mindanao region. He served 

as the Assistant Director of the OMM from 1894 to 1897, then as the Director from 1897 to 1927 (from 1901 to 1927 as the 

Director of the PWB). His first years as Director were some of the most crucial years – the Philippine Revolution (1896-1898), 

the Spanish-American War (1898), and the Filipino-American War (1899-1902). He retired from his post in 1927, leading the 

OMM in its transition from being a Spanish colonial state agency to an expanded weather bureau under the US Insular 

Government in the Philippines. See Ángel Hidalgo, El P. José Algué, S.J.: Científico, inventor y pacifista (1856-1930) (Manila: 

Observatorio de Manila, 1974). 

36 “Aneroid barometer applied to the prediction of the weather in the Philippine archipelago,” Report of the Philippine 

Commission to the President, Part 4 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901), pp. 328–32; Benito Viñes, “The 

Antilles Cyclonoscope,” trans. Isabella Owen, Weatherwise 42, no. 5 (1989), 258–61. 

37 José Algué, Baguios ó Tifones de 1894: Estudio de los mismos seguido de algunas consideraciones generales acerca de los 

caracteres de estos meteorós en el Extremo Oriente (Manila: Imprenta Litografía Partier, 1895), 173-183. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

8 

 

 

these stations were tasked to send daily, weekly, and monthly reports to the central station in 

Manila.38 

Fig. 2. Left, Faura’s aneroid barometer (1886); 39 right, Algué’s barocyclonometer (1897).40 

 

The US annexation of the Philippines in 1898 changed the dynamics of colonial politics 

in the Pacific region. As a new player, the United States had to position and project itself as a 

reputable military power. Their victory in the Spanish-American War (May–December 1898) 

forced the US to lay out ambitious plans on how to systematically control their newly acquired 

territory. Taking over the OMM was a strategic war decision for the United States. The 

American forces that arrived in the Philippines in May 1898 were not sufficiently familiar with 

the terrain and seas of the Philippines. They needed to secure control of vital geographic 

positions to carry out the military plans to pacify the islands. This is where they needed the 

collaboration of the Jesuit scientists and the crucial functions the OMM could provide. The US 

Army tapped the OMM’s scientists to provide them with vital naval and geographic 

information about the Philippines, such as the country’s topography, weather, and climatic 

conditions of the islands, as well as the maritime outposts of the Spanish government. They 

also requested that Father Algué, the OMM’s director, continue the scientific work and service 

despite the military presence in the area. At this stage, they informed him of the US 

government’s interest in taking over the OMM and explicitly asked the Jesuits to continue 

running it.41 The US government, after their acquisition of the Philippines from Spain, framed 

their political and economic projects in the islands under the guise of a benevolent and 

civilizing mission to reform the structure of governance, introduce public education and health 

 

38 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 74–81.  

39 Faura, El barómetro aneroide.  

40 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, Figura 161. 

41 Schumacher, “One Hundred Years of Jesuit Scientists,” p. 267; James Francis Warren, “Scientific Superman: Father José 

Algué, Jesuit meteorology, and the Philippines under American rule, 1897–1924,” in Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making 

of Modern American State, Alfred McCoy and Francisco Scarano, eds. (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin 

Press, 2009), 508. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

9 

 

 

systems, and Westernize the Filipino culture.42 Through the Philippine Commission Act No. 

131, the US Insular Government reorganized the OMM and expanded its work under a new 

name: the Philippine Weather Bureau (PWB).43 The PWB acquired instruments from the 

United States and established additional stations as soon as areas were selected, surveyed, and 

secured. Rain stations were also established in different positions around the archipelago to 

function specifically as facilities measuring and documenting rainfall.44 Importantly, American 

Jesuits arrived to work at the PWB and became part of the bureau’s scientific staff.45 By 

employing American Jesuits, the US Insular Government in the Philippines maximized their 

scientific expertise while lessening the presence of Spanish scientific personnel in the bureau. 

The US Insular Government prioritized the expansion of the PWB’s presence throughout the 

Philippine archipelago. From 1884-1887, the OMM network of stations consisted of one 

central station in Manila and 13 secondary stations all on the island of Luzon. From the 

reorganization of PWB in 1901 up to 1915, secondary and rain stations numbered 52.46  I argue 

that this institutional expansion resulted in the OMM being a dynamic scientific agency in 

terms of weather data collection in the Pacific region.  

 

Fig. 3.  The Seals of the OMM (1865-1901) and the PWB (1901-1945) 

 

 

42 Paul Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de 

Manila University Press, 2006); Victor Roman Mendoza, Metroimperial Intimacies: Fantasy, Racial-Sexual Governance, and 

the Philippines in U.S. Imperialism, 1899–1913 (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2002); Kristine Hoganson, 

Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New 

Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 

43 “Philippine Commission Act No. 131,” in Annual reports of the war department for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1901, 

Published Laws and Resolutions of the Philippine Commission (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901), 276–79; 

Philippine Weather Bureau, Weather Bureau Centennial, 1865–1965 (Quezon City: Philippine Weather Bureau 1966), 7. 

Some of the provisions of the law are the following: (1) a budget allotment to purchase new instruments, (2) sending weather 

reports and storm warning signals to port authorities, insular government officials, and local administrators of cities and towns, 

and (3) sending storm warnings to China, Formosa, and Japan. 

44 Report of the United States Philippine Commission to the Secretary of War for the period from December 1, 1900 to October 

15, 1901 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901), 51. 

45 Warren, “Jose Algué: Scientific Superman,” 509. 

46 Annual reports of the War Department for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1905; Volume IX: Report of the Philippine 

Commission; Part 2 and Volume X: Acts of the Philippine Commission (Nos. 1408-1538, inclusive), and public resolutions, 

etc., from October 19, 1905 to September 15, 1906 (Washington: Government Printing Office. 1906), 400 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

10 

 

 

Scientific Studies on Tropical Cyclones and Typhoons 

Since the establishment of the OMM in the late 1860s, the Jesuit scientists treated the 

Philippine cyclones (ciclones) and typhoons (tifones or baguio [bagyo in Philippine local 

languages]) that regularly hit the archipelago as a subject of scientific inquiry. The OMM’s 

research initiatives and publications starting from the 1860s until the end of the nineteenth 

century reflect the dual-pronged approach of harnessing information from the local Philippine 

environment and the broader Pacific region. Anduaga (2014) argues that in 1880, 15 years after 

its establishment, the OMM made typhoon research its principal task.47 For decades, the OMM 

made and published notable works on the history, origin, nature, and movement of typhoons 

in the Philippines and the Pacific seas. Fathers Faura and Algué teamed up and produced 

several publications on cyclones and typhoons. Faura’s Señales Precursoras contains 

information about cyclones and typhoons, recent studies about them, and precautionary 

measures in situations of cyclonic landfall, one of the first compilations of research and 

observation notes about tropical cyclones in the Philippines.  

The local scientific studies on tropical cyclones and typhoons, aimed at identifying the 

nature and unique character of these Philippine atmospheric experiences, blossomed the 

location of the country in global knowledge production on atmospheric cyclones. Indeed, the 

OMM and the PWB were active institutions in the region and had consistently produced 

notable publications on the subject. Father Miguel Selga, a Jesuit meteorologist and former 

director of the Philippine Weather Bureau from 1927 to 1941, extensively studied the nature 

of Philippine cyclonic phenomena, specifically typhoons. In one of his studies, he describes a 

Philippine typhoon as:  

[A] storm or vast system of violent winds rotating counterclockwise around a 

center of calm. Abundant rain accompanies the storm. The center itself has a 

relatively leisurely forward motion. This combination of motions has caused 

the stunned observer to speak with awe of a storm that turned around and came 

back. Typhoons are born in the Pacific, east of the Philippines. They then 

follow a curving almost parabolic path that in general cuts across the 

Philippines into the coastal regions of China and/or Japan.48 

To understand Philippine cyclones, the geographic character of the typhoons in the 

archipelago needs to be emphasized. Selga adds, “…by the term Philippine typhoon is meant 

one whose influence was felt in the Philippines. Though a typhoon lasts many days, a single 

date is given most times...” 49 Known respectively by Filipinos and Spaniards in the Philippines 

as bagyo or baguio, by the Portuguese in India and China as tifones, and as huracanes in Spain, 

the origin and the etymology of the words are indicative of its presence, regularity, and severity 

of tropical cyclones and typhoons in the various regions.50 Alternatively, the idea that typhoons 

have also social and cultural identifications needs to be recognized. Historically, people 

consider typhoons as devastating events, taking lives or inflicting harm to people, and causing 

destruction of property. Using this point of view, we can see how people from a certain period 

of time have known or identified a typhoon as a social or cultural phenomenon. Thus, in such 

a manner, nature-driven events became more historical if they have been considered hazardous 

or have caused disaster to human populations or settlements. Typhoons do not only sink ships 

 

47 Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits in the Philippines, 504. 

48 Miguel Selga, “Catalogue of Philippine Typhoons: 414-1703,” edited by Victor Badillo, Philippine Studies 20, no. 1 (1972), 

12-13.  

49 Ibid.  

50 Bankoff, “Winds of Colonization,” 66. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

11 

 

 

and disrupt economic activities but, by their very frequency and intensity, influence societies 

and even shape peoples’ cultures.51 

In scientific studies, newspaper reports, and literary materials, a lot of names or labels 

have been commonly used to describe this particular natural hazard. The terms tifón, baguio, 

huracán, and ciclón appear in a lot of documents. According to their respective historical 

analyses of the epistemology of these terms, both Selga and anthropologist Henry Otley Beyer 

concluded that they have distinct origins, even though they were used interchangeably. Selga 

explains that ciclón is of Indian origin, referring to tropical cyclones formed in the Bay of 

Bengal and striking the coasts of India and Bangladesh,52 while huracán has its roots in the 

Caribbean, named after Hunrakan, the Mayan Indian god of big winds.53 Meanwhile, storms 

that normally hit the coasts of the Philippines, China, and Japan are commonly called tifón or 

baguio.54 His fellow Jesuit meteorologist, Father Algué, argues that tifón was derived from the 

Chinese taifung; fung means wind while tai refers to extreme character, one that changes 

direction.55 Beyer further explains the Chinese origin of the term tifón. Using several accounts, 

like that of a Chinese-Buddhist pilgrim named Fa-hien (414 BCE) about his exploration of 

Palawan-Sumatra-Java area, several terms existed, almost all referring to typhoons as “great 

wind”: tai-fung, ta-fung, ta-feng, and dai-fu.56 A typhoon’s character as a “great wind”, as well 

as being a “black wind”, and having “violent rain,” can also be observed in the written accounts 

of Chinese travellers and chroniclers, such as Ling-wai-tai-ta (Report from the Region beyond 

the Mountains) by Chou Ku-fei (1178 CE), Chu-fan-chi (Description of the Barbarous Peoples) 

by Chau Ju-kua (1225 CE), and Ling-piau-lu-I by Liu Sun (618-906 CE).57 Given this, we can 

see that the label tai-fung/tifón/typhoon emerged as a hazard experienced on the western coast 

of the Philippines, and southern seas of mainland China.58 The Spaniards during their initial 

interactions with indigenous Filipinos in the late 16th century observed the latter’s use of bagyo 

to designate strong winds, probably derived from the Sanskrit vayu which corresponds to 

wind.59 

The quantity of OMM’s and PWB’s research initiatives and publications from the 

1880s to the 1910s also reflects the two-pronged approach of collecting information from the 

Philippine local environment and the broader Pacific region. From 1880 to 1914, the OMM 

and the PWB published 70 research works: 15 during the last years of the Spanish era (1880-

1898), and 55 during the early years of US rule (1899-1914). In the more than five decades 

from the 1880s, the OMM published 39 notable works on the nature and history of tropical 

cyclones and typhoons in the Philippines and its nearby regions, and related studies such as on 

instruments and codified scientific manuals, thousands of volumes of meteorological data, in 

the form of daily, monthly, and annual reports, as well as republished and translated works that 

were made available from in the 1920s and 1930s (Fig. 4). 

 

51 Ibid.  

52 Ibid. 

53 Bankoff, “Winds of Colonization,” 66.; I. R. Tannehill, The Hurricane Hunters (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1957), 7. 

54 Selga, “Catalogue of Philippine Typhoons: 414-1703,” 12-13.  

55 Algué, The Cyclones of the Far East, p. 11. 

56 Letter from H. Otley Beyer dated 16 April 1924, SELS3.1 023, Selga Correspondences, Institutional Data Records, Manila 

Observatory Library and Archives.  

57 Selga, Catalogue of Philippine Typhoons: 414-1703,” 7-9.  

58 Ibid., 10.  

59 J. R. Francisco, Indian Influences in the Philippines (Diliman, QC: University of the Philippines, 1964), 40. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

12 

 

 

Year Title Author 

1882 Señales Precursoras de temporal en el Archipiélago Filipino F. Faura 

1882 Los Ciclones del 20 de Octubre y 5 de Noviembre de 1882 F. Faura 

1886 El Barómetro Aneroide aplicado a la prevision del tiempo en el Archipiélago 

Filipino 

F. Faura 

1895 Baguios ó Tifones del 1894: Estudio de los mismos seguido de algunas 

consideraciones generales acerca de los caracteres de estos meteorós en el 

Extremo Oriente 

J. Algué 

1895 El Baguio de “Gravina” J. Algué 

1897 Baguios ó Ciclones Filipinos: Estudio teórico-práctico J. Algué 

1897 El barociclonometro J. Algué 

1898 El Baguio de Samar y Leyte, 12 y 13 de Octubre de 1897 J. Algué 

1899 The Barocyclonometer J. Algué 

1899 Tifones de Archipiélago Filipino y mares circumvecinos J. Doyle 

1900 El Baguio del 9 de Setiembre de 1900 J. Coronas 

1904 The Cyclones of the Far East J. Algué 

1905 El Barometro aplicado a la prevision del Tiempo en el Archipiélago Filipino M. Saderra Mata 

1906 The Hong Kong Typhoon, September 18, 1906 J. Algué 

1906 El Baguio de “Cantabria” M. Saderra Mata 

1908 The Typhoons of 1908 J. Coronas 

1909 Typhoon-Warning Code of the Manila Observatory J. Coronas 

1909 The Hongkong Typhoon, July 27 and 28, 1908 J. Coronas 

1909 The “Tarlac” Typhoon, September 18 to 27, 1908 J. Coronas 

1909 The Typhoon of May 23 to 31, 1908 J. Coronas 

1909 The Typhoons of 1909 J. Coronas 

1909 Three Typhoons in Luzon, October 4 to 13, 1908 J. Coronas 

1910 The Typhoons of October, 1909 J. Coronas 

1911 The Typhoon of the Batanes Islands and Southern Formosa, August 21 to 29, 1911 J. Coronas 

1911 The Typhoons of 1910 and 1911 J. Coronas 

1913 The Barocyclonometer for use in the North Atlantic J. Algué 

1913 The Typhoons of October, 1912 J. Coronas 

1930 Primer Catálogo de Baguios Filipinos M. Selga 

1931 Typhoons of August 1931 M. Selga 

1931 The Typhoon of Visayas, December 5-6, 1931 M. Selga 

1932 The Typhoons of Jolo-Indo-China, April 29-May 5, 1932 M. Selga 

1935 Charts of Remarkable typhoons in the Philippines, 1902-1934 M. Selga 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

13 

 

 

Fig. 4. Scientific Studies made by the OMM and PWB on Philippine Typhoons (1882-1945) 60 

 

In Baguios ó Ciclones Filipinos (1897), Father Algué further emphasized the important 

geographic and localized character of tropical cyclones and typhoons that pass by the 

archipelago, arguing that approaching the matter through this would enhance the Spanish 

colonial government’s mechanisms and responses in making towns and communities safer 

from tropical cyclones and typhoons.61 In 1904, an updated, English version of this book, titled 

The Cyclones of the Far East (1904)62 was published under the auspices of the US Insular 

Government in the Philippines, and supported by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. The book 

is divided into two parts: the first deals with the Jesuits’ theories about the occurrences of 

Philippine cyclones and typhoons in the Pacific, and the second details the indicators related 

to these cyclonic phenomena, with a brief discussion of Father Algué’s invention, the 

barocyclonometer.63 In September 1900, the American military government in the Philippines 

sent the officials and personnel of the OMM to a meteorological congress that was part of the 

1900 Universal Exposition in Paris, France. Father Algué presented the OMM’s work and 

publications during this meeting, including the two-volume geographical, meteorological, and 

climatological report El Archipiélago Filipino, the cartographic volume Atlas de Filipinas 

(1899), a report on the 1897 Luzon earthquake, and his barocyclonometer (see Fig. 5 for 

Algué’s publications).64  

In the 1930s, Father Selga published catalogues of Philippine tropical cyclones and 

typhoons, namely Primer catálogo de baguios Filipinos (1930), Charts of Remarkable 

Typhoons in the Philippines, 1902-1934 (1935), and Catalogue of Philippine Typhoons, 1848-

1934 (1935), which Anduaga (2014) characterizes as a complete picture of the typhoon 

experience in Southeast Asia.65 The third one is a descriptive listing of the recorded 

meteorological disturbances from the earliest one in the 5th century up to the 18th century. These 

catalogues are based on his survey of foreign accounts about Philippine tropical cyclones and 

typhoons, mostly based on Chinese, Indian, and Arab chronicles, and Jesuit and Spanish 

 

60 Titles of these materials are based on the lists and collections found in: Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 

pp. 196-200; Manila Observatory Library and Archives Website <archives.observatory.ph>; University of Michigan Digital 

Collections; University of Michigan Special Collections Research Center (UM-SCRC); Postal de Archivos Españoles 

(PARES); and the Biblioteva Nacional de España-Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (BNE-BDH). 

61 Algué, Baguios ó Ciclones Filipinos, iv-v. 

62 José Algué, The Cyclones of the Far East Second (Revised) Edition (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1904).  

63 “Report of the Director of the Philippine Weather Bureau”, Appendix G of the Report of the Secretary of Interior, September 

1, 1903 – August 31, 1904 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), p. 543; Algué, The Cyclones of the Far East. 

64 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 141–42; Barocyclonometer: New edition prepared by the Manila 

Observatory and published by La Estrella Norte (Manila: UST Press, 1937). 

65 Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits,” 511. 

1935 Catalogue of Philippine Typhoons, 1848-1935 M. Selga 

1936 Outlines of Philippines Frontology C. Deppermann 

1937 Are There Warm Sectors in Philippine Typhoons? C. Deppermann 

1937 Wind and Rainfall Distribution in Selected Philippine Typhoons C. Deppermann 

1939 Some Characteristics of Philippine Typhoons C. Deppermann 

1939 Typhoons and Depressions originating to the Near East of the Philippines C. Deppermann 

1945 Typhoons Originating in the China Sea C. Deppermann 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

14 

 

 

government reports. In 1972, an updated English version of the work was published, edited by 

a Filipino Jesuit historian at the Ateneo de Manila University, Victor L. Badillo.66 

After the OMM’s reorganization as the PWB in 1901, the expanded work on tropical 

cyclone and typhoon studies was evident in its official reports and bulletins. From 1902 to 

1940, it produced hundreds of maps that illustrate the tracks of tropical depressions, and 

tropical cyclones and typhoons in the Philippine and Pacific atmospheric areas. These track 

maps show the regularity and approximate locations of cyclonic movements in the Philippine 

archipelago’s vicinity. Based on the available records from the Manila Observatory Library 

and Archives (MOLA), there were 213 maps showing the approximate tropical cyclones and 

typhoon paths and tracks. 

 

Fig. 5. Published Studies on Philippine Tropical Cyclones and Typhoons authored by José 

Algué, 1895-1904. Upper Left: Baguios ó Tifones de 1894 (1895); upper right: Baguios 

ó Ciclones Filipinos: Estudio teórico-práctico (1897); lower left: El Baguio de  Samar 

y Leyte, 12-13 Octubre de 1897 (1898); lower right: The Cyclones of the Far East 

(1904). 

The information indicated in the maps corroborates Bankoff’s (2003) observation that, 

based on the annual US Insular Government reports, the period from 1880-1930 saw an 

increase in the number of recorded and documented tropical cyclones and typhoons in the 

 

66 Miguel Selga, “Catalogue of Philippine Typhoons: 414-1703.” 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

15 

 

 

Philippines.67 Moreover, the maps also present a picture of approximated tropical cyclone and 

typhoon movements in the greater Pacific region (Fig. 6). Aside from maps that focus on the 

Philippines, the PWB also made reports about typhoons that hit other parts of the Pacific, as 

well as summaries of storms that passed through the region in specific periods (Fig. 7). 

Examples of these are the Cantabria Cyclone of 22-28 September 1905, the Four Typhoons of 

September 1907, the Yap Typhoon of 17 December 1920, the Naha Typhoon of 23-25 August 

1931, and the summary map of cyclones from 1901-1920. 

Fig. 6. Tropical Depressions and Tropical Cyclones and Typhoons Indicated in Select Maps 

 of the PWB Annual Reports, 1902-1940.68 

 

Regional Scientific Knowledge Networks on Tropical Cyclones and Typhoons 

As the studies made by Legarda (1999) and Fast and Richardson (1987) emphasize, the 

nineteenth-century Philippine political and economic situation was highly dependent on 

external domains and affairs and was controlled by Anglo-American institutions, in particular, 

trading houses who were dominant in external trade and influenced local agricultural 

production.69 Aside from this fact, natural hazards pushed colonial administrations to act on 

the worsening domestic agricultural situation in the archipelago. To halt the losses in 

agriculture, trade, and commerce, governments and private sectors of different colonial 

territories ventured into supporting meteorology as an instrument to calculate and manage trade 

and shipping on the high seas. Therefore, the idea of meteorology as a modern colonial science 

developed in dual trajectories: (1) the evolution of the nature of colonial science, from the 

exploratory phase seen on natural history expeditions to the rise of institutional laboratories, 

and (2) modern weather observation through the use of new instruments for atmospheric 

condition prediction. 

 

67 Bankoff, Cultures of Disaster, 43.  

68 “Maps.” Manila Observatory Library and Archives (MOLA) <https://archives.observatory.ph/english/get_maps.php>. 

69 Benito J. Legarda, After the Galleons: Foreign Trade, Economic Change, and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth-Century 

Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999); and Jonathan Fast and Jim Richardson, Roots of 

dependency: Political and economic revolution in the 19th century Philippines (Quezon City: Foundation for Nationalist 

Studies, 1987). 

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

1902 1904 1906 1908 1910 1912 1914 1916 1918 1920 1922 1924 1926 1928 1930 1932 1934 1936 1938 1940

Tropical Depressions and Tropical Cyclones and Typhoons Indicated in Select Maps of the 
PWB Annual Reports, 1902-1940 

Tropical Depressions

Tropical Cyclones and Typhoons



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

16 

 

 

Cannon (1938) claims that OMM “was the first ever to give warning of weather 

conditions in the China Sea and the Western Pacific…”70  The work of the Jesuits and OMM 

on weather observation and meteorology, in local and regional scales, was not the earliest in 

the Pacific. As early as the late 18th century, the Dutch had already established meteorological 

outposts in Dejima, on the coast of the city of Nagasaki in Japan.71 Their meteorological data 

has been valuable in the reconstruction of the climate of Japan based on archival sources. In 

1849, the Russian Orthodox Mission in Japan expanded its small meteorological unit and 

operated at the expense of the Russian Embassy until 1863.72 Throughout the nineteenth 

century, “Japanese” institutional meteorology gained momentum.73 During the second half of 

the nineteenth century, several observatories were in operation and conducting meteorological 

observations in China, serving the traders and merchants of various European nations. In 1869, 

meteorologist Sir Robert Hart, Inspector General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs 

initiated a project wherein he organised the meteorological observation system of the bureau.74 

And in 1872, several decades after they had resurrected their mission in China, the Jesuits 

founded a meteorological observatory in Zikawei, Shanghai.75 Cannon (1938) adds, “the two 

Jesuit observatories were able to predict and broadcast weather warnings for the entire China 

coast, and the islands of the south.”76 It should be noted that as early as 1890, the director of 

the Zikawei Observatory, Father Marc Dechevrens, proposed to British authorities in Hong 

Kong a detailed proposal of collaboration with all the meteorological stations on the China 

coast centralized in Zikawei, as they were already making weather maps for the area.77 This 

proposal stemmed from the fact that the Zikawei Observatory, under Father Dechevrens’ 

leadership, made the bold move to be the central weather observatory in the China Coast, given 

the fact that it had direct relations with the meteorological observatory in Manila, maximizing 

their common Jesuit connection as scientists and institutions. 

Along with this line of development, the OMM led the pack of colonial institutions that 

pursued scientific research and institutionalized the meteorological work in the region. 

Anduaga (2014) argues the significant role of the OMM not only as one of the earliest in 

Southeast Asia and the Far East but also the one that succeeded in expanding its work and 

developing a proactive meteorological infrastructure, to disseminating information for public 

consumption.78 Looking at two statements in 1917 and 1927 on the work of the OMM/PWB, 

its enviable position and function showcase its utmost importance as a scientific institution in 

the Pacific region: 

 

70 Thomas B. Cannon, ‘History of the Jesuits in the Philippines,’ Woodstock Letters 67(2), 1938, p. 141. 

71 Gaston Demaree, Takehiko Mikami, Togo Tsukuhara, and Masumi Zaiki, “In the Wake of ‘De Liefde’:: The instrumental 

meteorological observations of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC),” Bull. Séanc. Acad. R. Sci. Outre-Mer 59(2-

4), 2003, pp. 385-405.  

72 P. Kevin MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology: The role of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 

2010), p. 11. 

73 Takuya Miyagawa, “Building the Imperial Meteorological Network and Making ‘Japanese Meteorology,’, 1868-

1945,”Seoul National University Doctoral Dissertation, 2015; G. P. Konnen, M. Zaiki, A. P. M. Baede, T. Mikami, P. D. 

Jones, and T. Tsukuhara, ‘Pre-1872 Extension of the Japanese Instrumental Meteorological Observation Series back to 1819’, 

Journal of Climate 16, 2003, pp. 118-131. 

74 Zhu, “Typhoons, Meteorological Intelligence,” 20. 

75 MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, 20. 

76 Cannon, “History of the Jesuits in the Philippines,” 141 

77 Agustín Udías, Searching the heavens and the earth: The history of Jesuit observatories (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic 

Publishers), 160.  

78 Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits in the Philippines,” 512.  



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

17 

 

 

The progress in the time service of the Philippine Islands is made evident from the fact that 

since October 1, 1917, the Cavite Radio Station, cooperating with the Bureau of Posts and the 

Manila Observatory, send out time signal of the 120th meridian East of Greenwich at 11 A.M. 

and 10P.M. every day, Sundays and holidays inclusive. Manila holds an enviable position in 

the Pacific and the interests of shipping companies making Manila a port of call are [sic: is] too 

prosperous to be overlooked. Accurate time signals and wise typhoon warnings are of immense 

value to the units of the United States Asiatic Fleet, to Army transports and in general to oversea 

[sic] the shipping. 79 

A glance at the map of the Far East will easily convince anyone that, with stations at Guam and 

Yap, both the efficiency of the Philippine Weather Bureau as an outpost to guard to whole Far 

East against surprises in the lines of typhoons would be tremendously increased. Both stations 

were round to off the system of the Philippine meteorological service toward the east, that is to 

say, toward the region of the Pacific where the great majority of typhoons are formed. 80 

 

Fig. 7.  Trayectorias Medias de los Baguios o Tifones en el Extremo Oriente.81 

 

MacKeown (2011) pointed out that no other meteorological observatory rivalled the 

OMM in its impact in the blossoming of meteorology in Hong Kong.82 Father Faura stated in 

1880 that establishing weather and typhoon forecasting institutions in the archipelago would 

not only help the Spanish Navy in its mandate to monitor the seas, but also the neighbouring 

colonies, due to the position of the Philippines at the forefront of the Pacific Ocean, as tropical 

 

79 “Wireless Time Service in the Philippine Islands,” Science, New Series, 46(1198), Dec. 14, 1917, p. 582, INS S1.1 061, 

Institutional Records, Manila Observatory Library and Archives. Emphasis added by author.  

80 José Coronas, “Importance of Yap and Guam as weather stations near the origin of typhoons” (1927), COR S2 011, 

Personnel Data Records, Manila Observatory Library and Archives. Emphasis added by author.   

81 José Algué, Baguios ó Tifones de 1894: Estudios de los mismos segudo de algunas consideraciones generals acerca de los 

caracteres de estos meteoros en el Extremo Oriente (Manila: Imprenta Litografía Parter, 1895), 170. 

82 MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, p. 17.  



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

18 

 

 

cyclones and typhoons travel from the Philippines to China, and never the other way around.83 

(See Figure No. 5) In 1907, the Manila Harbor Board reported that PWB, played an important 

part in an extensive and comprehensive system of meteorological stations in the Pacific, as it 

led the collection of data from “stations situated in various places over the Far East from Japan 

to Borneo,” and that the service was not only for the PWB, “but for all the meteorological 

departments in all countries and colonies of the Far East.”84 The board concluded that the 

service provided prompt and accurate information to weather bureaus in the widely scattered 

region of the Pacific, was “aided in giving proper forecasts for their respective localities.”85 

 

The OMM, PWB, and the Observatories in western Pacific 

Available data shows that by the year 1914, the PWB successfully established 

communications and relations with scientific institutions, organizations, and observatories 

around the world. Covering four regions (Europe, Asia and the Pacific/Oceania, Americas, and 

Africa) and 48 countries, the PWB had scientific exchanges with 308 institutions and 

observatories (Fig. 8).  

Region Countries Institutions/Observatories 

Europe 17 165 

Asia and the Pacific (Oceania) 10 37 

Americas 17 99 

Africa 4 7 

   

Totals 48 308 

Fig 8.   Summary of the Number of Institutions with Scientific Exchanges with the OMM and 

PWB.86 

Among these institutions, 22 are found in the western Pacific region, belonging to five 

countries and territories – China, Japan, Indochina, Java, and Singapore. [See Table No. 5] 

Generally, these institutions had a fair and smooth relationship with OMM, but notably in two 

countries the OMM’s ties expanded; the active turned lukewarm communications with Hong 

Kong Observatory and the intimate relations with the Tokyo Observatory.  

The list of OMM’s incoming and outgoing correspondence with their fellow Jesuits, 

Filipino officials and scientific staff, and foreign individuals and government institutions 

reveals the extent of their scientific communication network and their active engagements with 

different individuals and institutions regarding their scientific research and public service. Most 

of the exchanges stem from the continuous reliance of foreign institutions on information from 

the PWB, and the development of further scientific collaboration between the OMM with the 

experts from Europe and the United States. The bulk of this surviving collection of 

correspondence dates to the 1910s to 1930s, when Father Selga served as assistant director and 

later as director of the PWB (Figs. 9 & 10). 

 

83“Establecimiento y organización de un servicio meteorológico en las Islas Filipinas”, Ultramar,604, Exp.14. 

84 The Port of Manila, Philippine Islands: A yearbook devoted to foreign commerce and shipping of Manila and the Philippines 

(Manila: Manila Harbor Board, 1934), 33. 

85 Ibid.  

86 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 201-210. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

19 

 

 

 

 Other Pacific Meteorological Observatories Year 

Established 

Form of Scientific 

Exchange 

 

 

 

Manila 

Observatory 

Batavia Observatory (Java, Indonesia) 1869 WDE 

Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs 

(Shanghai, China) 

1869 DC, WDE 

Zikawei Observatory (Zikawei, China) 1872 DC, WDE, TW, MS 

Tokyo Central Observatory (Tokyo, Japan) 1875 DC, WD, TW, MS 

Hong Kong Observatory (Hong Kong Island) 1883 DC, WDE, TW 

Phù Liễn Observatory (Hải Phòng, French 

Indochina) 

1903 WDE 

Royal Thai Meteorological Service (Bangkok, 

Thailand) 

1923 WDE 

Bosscha Observatory (Lembang, West Japan) 1923 WDE 

Meteorological Division of the British Malayan 

Survey Department (Kuala Lumpur, British 

Malaya) 

1927 WDE 

Fig. 9. Manila Observatory and the nature of its relationship with various observatories.87 
Legend: DC, Direct Communications; WDE, Weather Data Exchange; TW, Typhoon Warnings; MS, 

Magnetic Surveys. 

 

Incoming 

Personnel Jesuits 

(Local) 

Jesuits 

(Abroad) 

Filipinos 

(Local) 

Filipinos 

(Abroad) 

Government 

Officials 

Foreigners Unknown 

J. Algué 4 -- 2 2 2 10 1 

J. Coronas -- -- 1 -- -- -- -- 

F. Faura -- -- -- -- 3 -- -- 

W. Repetti -- -- -- -- -- -- 1 

M. Saderra 

Masó 

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

M. Selga 6 10 45 2 12 89 11 

Outgoing 

Personnel Jesuits 

(Local) 

Jesuits 

(Abroad) 

Filipinos 

(Local) 

Filipinos 

(Abroad) 

Government 

Officials 

Foreigners Unknown 

J. Algué 4 7 1 -- 1 1 2 

J. Coronas 1 1 -- -- -- 2 -- 

F. Faura -- -- -- -- -- 1 -- 

W. Repetti -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

M. Saderra 

Masó 

-- -- 2 -- -- 1 -- 

M. Selga -- 3 17 -- 15 26 -- 

Fig. 10. Incoming and Outgoing Correspondences of certain Jesuit Officials of the OMM, 

1880s-1940s.88 

 

87 Ibid.  

88 Manila Observatory Library and Archives, http://archives.observatory.ph/english/personnel_records.ph  



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

20 

 

 

Typhoon “Feud”: Manila and Hong Kong, 1899 

Zhu (2012) argues that one rationale for the establishment of a specific network of 

observatories on the China Coast, namely the Shanghai, Zikawei, and Hong Kong, was to 

properly coordinate typhoon warning communication with Manila since most of the typhoons 

that arrive in that area pass by the Philippines first.89 The interactions between the Manila and 

Hong Kong observatories reflects a complex inter-island scientific relationship. This was 

realized in several parameters, including information sharing through telegraphic connections 

and an influx of donations from Hong Kong merchants to OMM. This cooperation started with 

the successful establishment of a submarine cable between Manila and Hong Kong in the early 

months of 1880.90 The Hong Kong traders and the colonial government headed by Governor 

John Pope Hennessey had been keen to create regular telegraphic communications between the 

two countries, sending petitions to the Spanish colonial government in Manila. Their primary 

reason was to share regular daily weather bulletins, meteorological notes and observations, 

and, critically, typhoon warnings.91 But, the relationship between the OMM and the island 

colony’s official weather agency, the Hong Kong Observatory, turned out to be lukewarm and 

volatile, as the supposed inter-institutional scientific partnership and public sector-driven 

engagement were marred by bureaucratic competition and scientific distrust amongst its 

agency heads. 

Father Faura was not keen to commit formally to the request because of the cost of 

telegraphic communications and, more practically, because he already had established contact 

with the closer meteorological stations in Shanghai and Xiamen which, arguably, Hong Kong 

could also rely upon for the same meteorological information.  An example of a typhoon 

advisory was the Señales de Mal Tiempo, a flyer or pamphlet containing weather notes and 

advice for seafarers.92 In the same year, Governor Pope Hennessy wrote a letter to the Spanish 

Governor-General asking for regular wireless communication of meteorological notes and 

observations to be established between their respective colonies.93 After almost two years of 

limited communication, however, an initiative led by a private telegraph company in 1882 

enabled a more stable weather communication reporting service and network between Manila 

and Hong Kong.94 The OMM’s 53 typhoon warnings issued between 1879 and 1882 captured 

the attention of businessmen from the nearby British colony of Hong Kong, which lacked a 

weather observatory.95 These merchants signified their intention to donate to the Jesuits for the 

purchase of supplementary apparatus and the improvement of their laboratory.96The Manila-

based newspaper El Comercio reported in 1880 that the Hong Kong traders donated to the 

 

89 Marlon Zhu, “Typhoons, meteorological intelligence, and the inter-port mercantile community in nineteenth-century 

China.” Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York, Binghamton, 106. 

90 Schumacher, “One Hundred Years of Jesuit Scientists,” pp. 261-262; Miguel Saderra Masó, Misiones Jesuíticas de Filipinas, 

1581-1768 y 1859-1924 (Manila: Imprenta Pontificia de la Universidad de Sto. Tomas, 1924), 101. 

91 MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, pp. 29 and 33; Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 63; Zhu, 

“Typhoons, meteorological intelligence,” 169-172; Schumacher, “One Hundred Years of Jesuit Scientists,” pp. 261-261; 

Saderra Masó, Misiones Jesuíticas, 101.  

92 Servicio Meteorológico, 1885-1897, SDS-12433 and 12434, National Archives of the Philippines (NAP), Manila.  

93 MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, 33. 

94 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 70. 

95 Marcial Sola, Report of the director of the Philippine Weather Bureau, 1902, Part 2: Meteorological service in the Philippine 

Islands, 1865-1902 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1903), 1011.  

96 Saderra Masó, Misiones Jesuíticas, 101. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

21 

 

 

OMM to purchase new instruments; it was spearheaded by several companies, such as the 

Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC).97  

Since the establishment of the Hong Kong Observatory in 1883, its director, August 

William Doberck treated other observatories on the China coast, such as Shanghai and Zikawei, 

as inferior. For him, the Hong Kong Observatory should be an independent and leading 

institution of typhoon studies, not auxiliary to other observatories. This was rooted in an initial 

proposal of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce Meteorological Committee wherein Zikawei 

would be the central station of a small network of weather agencies on the China coast, and 

that a Jesuit will be appointed as “Director-General of the China coasts and seas.”98 Saderra 

Masó (1915) considered this as the “el pecado original” (the original sin), which motivated 

Doberck’s hostile attitude towards the Zikawei Observatory and its director, Dechevrens, and 

later, to the OMM.99  Upon Doberck’s arrival in Hong Kong, he reported to the Hong Kong 

Colonial Secretary that there was no existing weather service on the China coast and that it had 

several stations that had useless instruments.100 These observations blatantly disregarded the 

existence of Jesuit observatories that were in their second decade of existence by the time of 

Doberck’s arrival. In early 1889, Father Faura made a bold decision to cut Manila’s weather 

report sending service to Hong Kong due to a misunderstanding with Doberck. In an apparent 

display of a defensive stance, the latter published an open letter in the newspaper Daily Press 

on 04 July 1889, saying that the correspondence from Manila did not matter in the smooth 

running of the weather observatory in Hong Kong.101 But due to the persistent requests from 

Hong Kong merchants and colonial governments having trading outposts in Hong Kong and 

on the China coast, the OMM gradually normalized its ties with Hong Kong, despite Doberck’s 

consistent disregard of their work. The communication between the two observatories 

continued professionally until the end of the century when differences broke out between the 

OMM Jesuits and the Hong Kong Observatory director concerning the Spanish-American War 

in Manila. The wars in the Philippines – the Philippine Revolution of 1896-1898, the Spanish-

American War of 1898, and the Philippine-American War of 1899 caused severe disruption to 

OMM’s work, including its relationship with the neighbouring British island colony.  

On 17 February 1899, Father Algué, then the OMM’s director, received an order from 

the US War Department in Washington prohibiting the OMM from sending messages, reports, 

and typhoon warnings to nearby territories in the South China Sea, especially to Hong Kong.102 

The order was a result of earlier communication between Willis Moore, Chief of the US 

Weather Bureau, and Doberck, where the latter recommended that the Americans bar the OMM 

from communicating with Hong Kong.103 In an obvious and calculated move to accommodate 

the advice of a colonial official from a neighbouring colony, the US Military Government in 

the Philippines executed the order from the US War Department. Doberck argued that the 

OMM was sending “sensational” or exaggerated reports because it was under the supervision 

of “men with little scientific education.”104 In a letter published in Manila and Hong Kong 

newspapers on 7 March 1899, Father Algué repudiated Doberck’s accusations, arguing that the 

 

97 Zhu, “Typhoons, meteorological intelligence,” 172-273. 

98 MacKeown, Early China coast meteorology, 42. 

99 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila, 69 and 84. 

100 Ibid., 70. 

101 Ibid., 72. 

102 Saderra Masó, Historia del Observatorio de Manila; Repetti, The Manila Observatory, 19.  

103 Zhu, “Typhoons, Meteorological Intelligence,” 255. 

104 Repetti, The Manila Observatory, 19; Zhu, “Typhoons,” 256–57. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

22 

 

 

OMM’s work was for the welfare of the public.105 The issue continued to make headlines with 

press commentaries in both countries siding with the OMM and the Jesuits, and commercial 

groups such as the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce (HCC) expressed their disappointment 

with the two weather agencies.106 On 03 April, after almost two months of suspension, a request 

from Hong Kong’s business sector channelled through the governor of the British colony, 

Arthur Blake, led to the US government lifting the restriction and the OMM resumed its 

reporting to Hong Kong.107 

The end of the controversy served as a catalyst for US appreciation of the OMM’s 

scientific work. Zhu (2012) describes this 1899 incident between the two observatories as a 

“news-mediated incident.”108 The Hong Kong newspapers played a crucial role in creating 

public sentiment favorable to their chosen protagonist in the issue.  In the last quarter of 1899, 

commentaries published in the China Mail show that Doberck’s boorish treatment of the 

Manila Fathers had caused much loss to Hong Kong.109 Moreover, this event exhibits the reality 

of inter-colonial political relations in the region. The US, which just came from a war with 

Spain, had to be cautious in dealing with Western counterparts as they took on their new 

colonial possession in the Pacific. Since the “request” came from an ally country, Doberck’s 

expert commentary on the Jesuits was received not merely as a petition, but as war advice that 

needed appropriate action from the US military in the Philippines. The issue pushed the US 

and British colonial governments to move cautiously in dealing with the scientific clash, which 

concerned various war and economic interests. The issue might have been a product of 

institutional rivalry, but the event fell under the auspices of international war and involved 

various colonial interests.  

 

The OMM and PWB at Colonial Expositions and Scientific Congresses: Showcasing 

Science, Projecting the Empire 

International colonial expositions and scientific congresses became avenues for the 

OMM and PWB to present their scientific research, showcase their inventions, establish 

external connections and networks, and gain international prestige as one of the leading 

scientific institutions and observatories in the world (Fig. 11). In these international political 

and scientific gatherings, the OMM and PWB successfully portrayed themselves as modern 

scientific institutions in the Pacific, proudly promoting their scientific research, projects, and 

achievements, and strongly projecting the subtle and not-so-subtle image of Spanish and US 

empires, which both banked on modern scientific knowledge to pursue their respective colonial 

and imperial projects. Ultimately, the network established in this scientific endeavour served 

as the “extension” of their institutional relationship with the western Pacific meteorological 

observatories. Anduaga (2014) argues that the international community continued to recognize 

 

105 Letter of José Algué to the US Provost Marshall, Algué Correspondence Folder, 1893–1900, Manila Observatory personnel 

data records, Manila Observatory Library and Archives.  

106 See Zhu, “Typhoons, meteorological intelligence,” 258-265. According to Zhu, the published letter from the Jesuits 

contained changed words and paraphrased sentences, and omitted parts of Doberck’s original letter; Hong Kong Daily Press, 

28 March 1899, cited by MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, 177. 

107 Zhu, “Typhoons, Meteorological Intelligence,” pp. 258-265. 

108 Ibid. The author argued that Father Algué paraphrased Doberck’s original letter. 

109 MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, p. 174; El servicio Meteorológico del Observatorio de Manila: Vindicado y 

rehabilitado (1899) (Manila: Imprenta del Observatorio, 1899). 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

23 

 

 

the value of the OMM’s scientific work, despite Spain’s loss in the Spanish-American War of 

1898, and its sale of the Philippines to the United States.110 

Year Exposition/Congress Participants from 

the OMM/PWB 

1883 Universal Colonial Exposition, Amsterdam (Netherlands) F. Faura 

1885 Meteorological Society of Hamburg (Germany) F. Faura 

1887 Colonial Exposition, Madrid (Spain) F. Faura 

1888 Colonial Exposition, Barcelona (Spain) F. Faura and J. Algué 

1889 Meteorological Congress, Paris (France) F. Faura and J. Algué 

1893 Meteorological Congress Chicago (USA). Part of Columbian 

Exposition. 

F. Faura and J. Algué 

1895 Regional Exposition Manila (Philippines)  

1900 Meteorological Congress Paris (France) J. Algué, F. Cicera, 

M. Saderra Masó 

1902 French Colonial Exposition Hanoi (Indochina)  

1904 St. Louis Exposition Missouri (USA) J. Algué, Roman 

Lacson, Roman 

Trinidad 

1905 Meteorological Congress Innsbruck (Austria) J. Algué 

1920 First Pacific Science Congress Honolulu, Hawaii (USA) M. Saderra Masó 

1923 Second Pacific Science Congress, Melbourne and Sydney, 

(Australia) 

M. Selga 

1925 Vatican Missionary Exposition Rome (Italy)  

1926 Third Pacific Science Congress Tokyo (Japan) M. Selga 

1929 Fourth Pacific Science Congress Java (Indonesia) W. Repetti 

1930 Far East Weather Service Directors’ Conference M. Selga 

1931 International Overseas Colonial Exposition Paris (France)  

1932 First Philippine Science Convention Manila (Philippines) Staff of the PWB 

1933 Fifth Pacific Science Congress Victoria and Vancouver (Canada) W. Repetti 

Fig. 11. List of International Expositions and Scientific Congresses where the OMM/PWB participated,

 1883-1937.111 

After they participated in the Vienna Meteorological Congress in 1873, the Jesuit 

Fathers were encouraged by congress delegates to publish their studies.112 It came to fruition 

in 1875 when the Signal Service Office in Washington, D.C. asked for their published weather 

bulletins in the international scientific community.113 In the 1883 Exposición Colonial 

Universal held in Amsterdam, Father Faura presented his book, together with his aneroid 

 

110 Anduaga, “Spanish Jesuits,” 519.  

111 Repetti, “The Manila Observatory”, The Woodstock Letters 77(4), 238-243; Repetti, The Manila Observatory, 37-39. 

112 Federico Faura and José Algué, La meteorológía en la exposición Columbina de Chicago (1893): Memoria escrita 

(Barcelona: Imprenta de Henrich y Compañia en Comandita, 1894), p. 115; Saderra Masó, Historia de Observatorio de 

Manila, 30. 

113 Saderra Masó, Historia de Observatorio de Manila, 30.  



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

24 

 

 

barometer, to the delegates from different scientific institutions in Europe and Asia.114  The 

OMM also participated in the Exposición General de Filipinas in Madrid in 1887 and 

Exposición Universal de Barcelona in 1889, where it received the highest appraisal and 

honours.115  

In the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the OMM presented to the exposition 

delegates its meteorological instruments from Manila. This international exposition included 

scientific lectures that featured meteorological devices such as anemometers, thermographs, 

snowfall recording apparatus, and different types of thermometers.116 The exposition also 

featured exhibits that showed advancements in instrument use and application. Physical notions 

such as presión atmosférica (atmospheric pressure), temperatura de aire (air temperature), 

corrientes aéreas (airstreams), meteoros acuosos (aqueous meteors), and psicrómetros 

composed the exhibit that had on display barometers, barographs, thermometers, 

teletermómetros (tele-thermometers, for measurement of temperature of distant places), 

anemometers, anemoscopes (wind direction indicators), and pluviographs.117  Fathers Faura 

and Algué admitted that indeed, the invention, in general, and the use of recording instruments 

had opened new horizons in the science of meteorology.118 They added that experimental 

meteorology had changed since Secchi’s meteorograph was presented to the scientific 

community and featured at the universal expositions held to popularize inventions—the 1867 

and 1878 expositions in Paris and the 1873 exposition in Vienna.119  Faura and Algué were 

very optimistic that, through their report, the Columbian exposition would inspire youth to 

pursue studies in meteorology.120 The popularization of instruments and the rise of recording 

tools prompted the quick recognition of meteorology as an indispensable pillar of colonial 

development. Indeed, the number of instruments that the OMM had acquired at the time of the 

Columbian Exposition was on par with the global trend. 

In 1904, almost six years after the United States annexed the Philippines, the US 

celebrated the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase121, a turning point in the history of its 

territorial expansion. In celebration, the St. Louis World’s Fair, an international exposition 

showcasing the scientific, technological, and cultural advancements being made throughout the 

world, was held in Missouri. The World’s Fair revealed the many sides of imperialism and 

exposed the United States’ intention to transform the Philippines into a colony framed by its 

protracted notion of civilization. In 1901, the PWB participated in this event and exhibited its 

inventions, instruments, collections, and selected scientific publications. The PWB’s team that 

headed to St. Louis included its director, Father Algué, and two Filipinos, Augusto Ferrer, a 

draughtsman, and Roman Trinidad, a mechanic.122 Two other Jesuit scientists went to Missouri 

several months ahead to make the preparations. The exhibit was composed of three sections: 

 

114 Saderra Masó, Historia de Observatorio de Manila, 61; Faura, El barómetro aneroide aplicado a la previsión del tiempo 

en el Archipiélago filipino, 2 

115 Saderra Masó, Historia de Observatorio de Manila, 97-98.  

116 Faura and Algué, La meteorológía en la exposición Colombina de Chicago (1893), 23-24 

117 Ibid., 69-103.  

118 Ibid., 115.  

119 Ibid. 

120 Ibid., 115-116.  

121 The United States, during the administration of President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, purchased from France the vast 

Louisiana territory of France in North America. This significant land acquisition signaled the United States’ continental 

expansion in the nineteenth century, giving the country massive agricultural and mineral resources for its economic projects. 

122 José Algué, “The Philippine Weather Bureau at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis,” Annual Reports of the 

Philippine Commission 1904 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905), 551; Repetti, The Manila Observatory, 39. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

25 

 

 

geographical, meteorological, and seismic. It had a two-story building and a giant relief map 

of the Philippines in front. The building was a 33x33 meter-sized structure; it housed 

meteorological and seismic instruments, special maps, and drawings.123 The instruments the 

PWB exhibited included the Vicentinni microseismograph and seismometer for the seismic 

sections, and anemograph, kinemo-anemograph, ceraunograph, mercurial barometer, 

barograph, Algué’s barocyclonometer, refraction nephoscope, solar chronometer, and 

hygrometer for the meteorological section.124 The relief map measured 100x65 feet. Placed 

around it were eight smaller maps, which show the political and cultural divisions of the 

archipelago, as well as ethnic groupings, mineral resources, agricultural and forest products, 

seismic zones, average rain and temperature records for specific months, and meteorological 

districts and stations of the PWB. The relief maps also had models of Taal and Mayon 

volcanoes and the Manila Bay. The PWB presented some of its publications: the two-volume 

El Archipiélago Filipino, an atlas, and a book on its institutional history. Also displayed in the 

exhibit were some Philippine products, like embroidered piña cloth, sculptured shells, 150 

specimens of wood, and furniture made from bolonguita and narra.125 For the whole duration 

of the exposition, Filipinos were hired to take care of PWB’s exhibit.  

The PWB was recognized with an outstanding citation and its staffers were honoured 

with individual awards. It was also given a special honour for a model meteorological-

seismological station and Father Algué received a gold medal for his barocyclonometer and 

other instruments made by the PWB under his supervision, such as the nephoscope, and the 

PWB version of the microseismograph.126 The native Filipino personnel of the PWB exhibit, 

Trinidad, Ferrer, Gervasio de Guia, and Ramon Navarro who constructed the exhibit, and 

Roman Lacson, a Filipino pensionado (US Insular Government scholar) and law graduate from 

Georgetown University, who manned it over the months it was in situ, also received awards.127 

The US projected in the exposition the dichotomy of “civilization” and “savagery,” which 

advanced the idea that conquest and administration of the Philippines were beneficial to the 

archipelago. The PWB symbolized modernity and scientific progress: a complete contrast to 

other Philippine-related exhibits which displayed the supposed “vulgarity” and “exoticism” of 

Philippine culture. To explain this duality, the US claimed the PWB as their creation and 

blatantly attempted to erase the bureau’s Spanish origin. The PWB exhibit demonstrated to an 

international public – from travellers, traders, agriculturists, anthropologists, and even Olympic 

athletes – that the US pacification of the Philippines was benevolent and had brought 

enlightenment to the archipelago. 

 

Conclusion 

The scientific activities of the OMM and PWB from the 1860s to the 1940s illustrate 

the significant contributions of its local research initiatives and international scientific network-

building and collaborations. On the one hand, pioneering scientific research work and 

publications of the Jesuit meteorologists on tropical cyclones and typhoons showcase the 

wealth of information and knowledge they helped produce to understand the said atmospheric 

phenomena that clearly impacted the social and economic life of the Philippine archipelago. 

 

123 Algué, “The Philippine Weather Bureau at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” 551.  

124 Ibid., 556-558. 

125 Ibid., 556. 

126 Ibid., 551; Report of the Philippine Weather Bureau, Appendix L, Annual Reports of the War Department for the Fiscal 

Year ended June 30, 1905 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905), 416. 

127 Algué, “The Philippine Weather Bureau at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis,” 551. 



 History of Meteorology 12 (2025) 

26 

 

 

Beyond the conventional approach of what is considered foreign or local, the research work of 

the Jesuit scientists, despite its international expansion, remained primarily for the benefit of 

the Philippines as a “locality.” The OMM and PWB’s primary objective during the late 

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to provide a structured, scientific approach to 

weather forecasting and cyclonic predictions. Through research and the introduction of 

instruments catered to the local conditions of the archipelago, the Jesuits advanced a form of 

public science, which served the government and private commercial sectors, making 

meteorology a vital support for bureaucratic governance and public engagement in the colonial 

Philippines. On the other hand, the OMM and the PWB successfully established regional and 

global network links and partnerships not only for the purposes of inter-state collaborations for 

safer shipping but also for efficient dissemination and exchange of information on 

meteorology. For almost eight decades of its institutional existence, the OMM and the PWB, 

engaged their contemporary meteorological observatories in the region, contributing to the 

establishment of dynamic networks of meteorological knowledge sharing and dissemination. 

It thrived as an institution that weathered the restive era of economic transformation and 

scientific collaboration from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. 

 

 

Acknowledgements 

I would like to express my gratitude to the following for their scholarly support to me 

in pursuing this research: the Manila Observatory Library and Archives at the Ateneo de 

Manila University, the University of Tokyo Libraries, and the University of Michigan Libraries 

for allowing me access to their collections; I am also grateful to the Japan Foundation for the 

Japanese Studies Fellowship Program (JF-JSFP) Grant 2022-2023 for supporting my library 

research in Japan, and to the University of Michigan Libraries Philippine Scholars Research 

Fellowship (UM-PSRF) 2024-2025 for making my archival research in the United States 

possible; and to my colleagues and friends in the Philippines and abroad, namely, Ruel V. 

Pagunsan, Anthony D. Medrano, Fe Susan Go, Barbara Alvarez, Togo Tsukuhara, Fiona 

Williamson, Takuya Miyagawa, Marlon Zhu, Shinji Miyagawa, and Toru Nakanishi for the 

valuable conversations and their insights in improving this paper.  


