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Proceedings of the International Commission on History of Meteorology 1.1 (2004)

5. Cleveland Abbe and the Birth of the National Weather Service,

1870-1891

Edmund P. Willis

Kinsale Research
Alexandria, Virginia, USA

and

William H. Hooke

American Meteorological Society
Washington, DC, USA

Cleveland Abbe (1838-1916) made substantial scientific and administrative
contributions to nascent national weather services during their first twenty years under
the aegis of the U.S. Army Signal Corps.  Prior studies of the Signal Service, however,
give short shrift to Abbe’s work.  In particular most accounts barely mention Abbe’s
scientific endeavors during the initial decade, 1871-1880.1   This paper examines three
aspects of Abbe’s career: (a) his background; (b) the science he initiated; and (c) his
administrative accomplishments.  Two conclusions emerge: first, Abbe initiated
significant, broad-based scientific research, beginning in the 1870s; and second, Abbe’s
scientific contributions deserve recognition for their part in the evolution of 19th century
meteorology.

Abbe shared the background and many of the characteristics of American
scientists in the 19th century.  His father, George W. Abbe, was a New York merchant of
New England ancestry.  His parents raised him in the Baptist tradition of service and
respect for others.  He took his undergraduate degree in 1857 from the Free Academy,
forerunner of the City College of New York, where he demonstrated an interest in
meteorology.  He went on to study astronomy in 1859 at the University of Michigan, and
began work with the U. S. Coast Survey in 1860 at its office in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.  There he acquired a desire for graduate study abroad.  Having read Piazzi
Smyth’s book, Three Cities in Russia (1862), he bypassed German universities (the more
usual destination for American scholars) in favor of Russia.  There he served as



Proc. ICHM 1.1 (2004) 49

supernumerary astronomer at the Nicholas Central Observatory in Pulkovo, near St.
Petersburg, from 1865-67.2  Otto Struve, the observatory’s director, set him to work re-
analyzing James Bradley’s 18th century stellar observations.3  After two years at Pulkovo,
Abbe returned home and took a job with the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.  On
the voyage across the Atlantic, speaking with another passenger, he voiced his ambition
to head an observatory.  A report of this chance conversation found its way to the
Cincinnati Astronomical Society then seeking a director for its observatory.  The
association sought out Abbe and hired him to begin work in 1868.4

Abbe found the Cincinnati observatory neglected and in disrepair.  He initially
proposed an ambitious program of astronomy, meteorology, and study of geomagnetism.
The Society, however, lacked the financial resources, and so Abbe focused on weather
forecasting.  The Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce agreed to support the effort for three
months, beginning September 1, 1869.5  Abbe organized a system of volunteer weather
observers, and persuaded the Western Union Company to provide free telegraph services.
He commenced predictions on schedule, and forecasting actually continued until June,
1870.6  Ultimately the Astronomical Society could not fund the operation at a level
satisfactory to Abbe, and so he returned to New York City in 1870.7

At about that time a movement commenced to create a national weather service.
Increase Lapham of Milwaukee, as early as 1848, had observed growing storm damage to
vessels and loss of seamen on the Great Lakes.8   In 1869 he petitioned the federal
government to provide a storm warning system for the Lakes.  His Congressman, Halbert
G. Paine, expanded the proposal to include the entire nation.  Paine’s bill reached
Congress in December, 1869 and passed in February, 1870.9  Coincidentally, with
declining military budgets, Colonel Albert Myer, the Army’s Chief Signal Officer (CSO)
sought a peacetime mission.  He pleaded with Paine to head the new service, offering
experienced leadership and a disciplined workforce.  In 1870 Congress made the War
Department responsible for the storm warning system and Myer got his wish.10

Colonel Myer brought unique qualifications to the task.  While studying medicine
in the 1840s he worked as a telegrapher.  As an Army medical officer, serving in Texas
before the Civil War, his duties included reporting local weather conditions to the
Surgeon General. While there he developed a semaphore signaling system for the Army.
With the onset of the Civil War Myer won appointment as Chief Signal Officer in the
Union Army.  Based on his wartime exploits contemporaries knew Myer as an aggressive
problem solver with political connections.11  As he set out in 1870 to organize the new
weather service, Myer consulted leading scientists, but hesitated to hire civilian expertise.
He finally took on Increase Lapham late in 1870 to issue storm warnings for the Great
Lakes.  Lapham, however, resigned after a few weeks.  Myer then contacted Abbe in
New York and hired him in January, 1871 as Professor and Chief Meteorologist.12

Myer and Abbe set up headquarters in Washington, DC. Abbe organized the
forecasting process, and published the first “indications” or “probabilities” on February
19, 1871.  He trained Army lieutenants to continue the predictions, and provided a
verification procedure.  He selected equipment, and began reducing barometric readings
to sea level equivalents.13  As the system developed numerous questions arose, within the
headquarters staff, from the field observers, and from the general public.  Abbe grappled
with these questions both practical and theoretical in his office, known as the Study
Room.14  From these issues sprang a program of basic and applied science.



Cleveland Abbe and the Birth of the National Weather Service 50

The annual reports of the Chief Signal Officer provide a window into Signal
Service science accomplished under Abbe’s direction.  These reports cite some 77
separate investigations conducted in the period 1871-1880.  No report cites fewer than
four such studies, with ten or more studies in three of the years.15   The varied scientific
investigations and initiatives ranged broadly over the meteorological spectrum, and fall
into nine major categories.  Some of the earlier work established or utilized baselines and
climatologies, e.g., elevations of observation stations,16 meteorological variations at
different elevations on Mount Washington,17 the height and range of tides at important
ports,18 and charts of average barometric pressure, rain areas, and prevailing winds.19

Abbe and his team from the very beginning sought the most advanced instrumentation,
e.g., balloon-borne sensors,20 self-recording instruments,21 and instruments that recorded
remotely.22  They undertook case studies of severe weather, along lines established by
James Espy and others earlier in the century,23 e.g., Abbe’s study in 1873 of two severe
coastal storms, using ships’ logs,24 and Sgt. Theodore Smith’s report on the storm of
April 14-18, 1873.25

The several acts of Congress establishing and expanding weather services
specifically mentioned support of agriculture and commerce in addition to public safety.26

Accordingly, the Signal Service conducted economic studies, such as Lapham’s reports
on shipping disasters,27 the 1875 study of temperatures that would freeze canals and halt
commerce,28 and the 1877 study of high and low river levels and their relation to
navigability.29   Similarly they did ecological studies, such as the 1877 cooperative study
with the Interior Department on locust swarms,30 and studies of water temperatures for
use in fisheries management.31 Other papers addressed geomagnetic activity, e.g., Abbe’s
1873 compilation of auroral observations,32 and his case study of the auroral display of
April 7, 1874.33  In 1873 he instituted direct support of the public and the scientific
community by publishing the Monthly Weather Review.  He brought out the Bulletin of
International Simultaneous Observations two years later.34  Finally, Abbe addressed
other fields, such as his paper in 1875 on seismic observations,35 and his report on the
1878 solar eclipse.36  Indeed the CSO’s reports during the 1870s attribute some 20
scientific endeavors to Abbe by name.37  Beginning in 1881, Myer’s successor, Brig.
Gen. William B. Hazen, formally instituted the Study Room, enabling Abbe to recruit
distinguished scientists such as William Ferrel and Thomas Mendenhall.  Thereafter the
CSO reported a swelling number of scientific studies.  The annual reports, however,
clearly indicate that scientific projects began in earnest under General Myer in the 1870s.

As a science administrator Abbe trained field observers (Army enlisted men) and
the forecasting staff (Army junior officers).  He selected the textbooks and lectured.
Abbe initially supervised the Indications Department, where he and the Army officers
took turns on a monthly rotation, issuing weather forecasts.  He saw to the selection,
procurement, calibration, and development of instrumentation for use by the observers.
He established a records system that accumulated mountains of meteorological and
climatological data, from the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe, and
sought to make these available to other scientists.  From the start Abbe built a
professional library to support the scientific work.  By 1872 the shelves contained 1,340
volumes, and by 1887 the collection had grown to 9,845.38  Abbe also compiled an
extensive bibliography on meteorology, aiming to include every title since the beginning
of printing.  By 1887 he had almost 55,000 entries.  The CSO considered the



Proc. ICHM 1.1 (2004) 51

bibliography so important that, lacking a specific appropriation for it, he had it distributed
in typescript.39  In addition to the two weather journals, the Signal Service published
thousands of weather maps and bulletins,40 including the first global weather map that
Abbe put together in 1872.41  In addition, he wrote some 40 articles in the 1870s, and
another 64 papers in the 1880s.42  He urged universities to offer courses in meteorology
for which he designed curricula.  He translated numerous foreign meteorological articles
and disseminated them to American scientists.  He carried on a voluminous
correspondence with foreign meteorologists.  Also during this period, Abbe demonstrated
his appetite for science administration in another arena: the development and adoption of
standard time.  Although Abbe ran into political difficulties in attaining the goal, he
designed the basic time system and laid out the path ultimately used to reach the
necessary national and international agreements.43

In summary, Cleveland Abbe made his mark as a practicing scientist and
meteorologist, not as a theoretician.  As a visionary entrepreneur he began weather
forecasting from Cincinnati and attempted there to put meteorology on a commercial
basis.  The daily forecasts that he initiated from Washington have continued
uninterrupted to the present.  He operated from a global perspective, translating and
disseminating foreign weather science, and the two journals he edited and his
correspondence reached a worldwide audience.  He conceived a wide-ranging program of
basic and applied meteorological science. He served as a manager of science, training
observers and forecasters, collecting and disseminating data.  Abbe understood that
advancing meteorological sciences and services made unique demands on
infrastructure—the network of trained observers and instruments, a centralized facility
for analysis, a schedule of predictions, and organized sustained research to improve the
whole.  Working with a succession of Chief Signal Officers, he helped to develop this
system, and set national weather policy through establishing organizational and
operational precedents.  Brig. Gen. William Hazen in 1885 said, “[to Abbe] we are
indebted for the very existence of the Weather Bureau”.44  Though no scientific
phenomenon or theory bears his name, Abbe provided the scientific instincts, leadership,
and administrative energy that helped shape the era in American meteorology that
Fleming has termed the period of “government service (1870-1920)”.45  Moreover, as the
American weather service expanded its reach across the continent, grew in personnel,
created a variety of weather products, and amassed its professional collections, Abbe and
the Signal Service moved the United States to the center of world meteorology.46



Cleveland Abbe and the Birth of the National Weather Service 52

Endnotes

1 See for example Donald R. Whitnah, A History of the United States Weather Bureau,
Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1961, pp. 38-40; Paul J. Scheips, “Albert James Myer,
Founder of the Army Signal Corps: A Biographical Study”, American University, Ph.D.
dissertation, 1965; Rebecca R. Raines, Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the
U.S. Army Signal Corps, Washington, DC, Center of Military History, 1996, p. 54.

2 Alan H. Batten, Resolute and Undertaking Characters: The Lives of Wilhelm and Otto
Struve, Dordrecht, Neth.: D. Reidel, 1988, p. 105; William J. Humphreys, “Biographical Memoir
of Cleveland Abbe”, National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, VIII (1919), 469-
508, pp. 469-470, 472; Cleveland Abbe, “What I Remember About My Friends and Myself”,
U.S. Library of Congress, Cleveland Abbe Papers, Container 32, typescript, pp. 48-49.  Hereafter:
Abbe Papers.

3 Truman Abbe, Professor Abbe…and the Isobars: The Story of Cleveland Abbe
America’s First Weatherman, New York, Vantage Press, 1955, p. 38.

4 Ibid., pp. 85-91, 97-98; C. Abbe, “What I Remember”, Abbe Papers, pp. 64-65.
5 T. Abbe, Professor Abbe, op. cit., pp. 97-105; James R. Fleming, Meteorology in

America, 1800-1870, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990, pp. 150-151; George
McLaughlin, Secretary of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce to Prof. Cleveland Abbe, July
17, 1869, Collections of the Cincinnati Historical Society Library, Cincinnati, Ohio, MSSVF
3065.

6 T. Abbe, Professor Abbe, op. cit., pp. 106, 109-116; Fleming, Meteorology in America,
op. cit., p. 152.

7 Julius Dexter, Secretary of the Cincinnati Observatory Board, to Abbe, Dec. 3 & 15,
1870; William Hooper, Cincinnati Astronomical Society, to Abbe, Dec. 21, 1870, Abbe Papers,
MSS, Container No. 6.

8 Eric R. Miller, “The Evolution of Meteorological Institutions in the United States”,
Monthly Weather Review, 59 (Jan., 1931), 1:1-6, p. 4; Miller, “New Light on the Beginnings of
the Weather Bureau from the Papers of Increase A. Lapham”, Monthly Weather Review, 59 (Feb.,
1931), 2: 65-70, pp. 65-66.

9 Patrick Hughes, A Century of Weather Service…1870-1970, New York, Gordon and
Breach, 1970, p. 7; C. Abbe, “The Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service, 1870 to
1891”, Report of the Chicago Meteorological Congress, Part II, Extract (1893), 1-53, p. 4; A.
Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,
1957, p. 187; Eric R. Miller, “Tradition Versus History in American Meteorology”, Monthly
Weather Review, 58 (Feb., 1930), 65-66, p. 65; Miller, “New Light” op. cit, pp. 66-67; Chief
Signal Officer, Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer to the Secretary of War, Washington,
Government Printing Office, 1891, Appendix 8, p. 338.

10Dupree, Science, op. cit., p. 188; Fleming, Meteorology in America, op. cit., pp. 155-
156; Miller, “Tradition Versus History”, Monthly Weather Review, op. cit., p. 65; Miller, “New
Light”, Monthly Weather Review, op. cit., p. 68.

11 American National Biography (hereafter ANB); Miller, “New Light”, Monthly Weather
Review, op. cit., pp. 68-69; Scheips, “Albert James Myer”, op. cit.

12 C. Abbe, “Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service”, op. cit., p. 8; T. Abbe,
Professor Abbe, op. cit., pp. 123-124; Raines, Signal Corps, op. cit., p. 72, note 38; Albert J.
Myer to Cleveland Abbe, Dec. 10 & 27, 1870, Abbe Papers, Container No. 6; Clevland Abbe to
William A. Eddy, Aug. 21, 1888, Abbe Papers, Container No. 8.

13 C. Abbe, “Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service”, op. cit., pp. 5-7, 47-49;
Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer 1871, pp. 3-16, 47-48; Mark Monmonier, Air



Proc. ICHM 1.1 (2004) 53

Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 7-8.

14 C. Abbe, “Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service”, op. cit., pp. 9-11; Annual
Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1871), pp. 12,14; (1872), pp. 86-87; (1879), p. 195; U. S.
Congress, Senate, Testimony before the Joint Commission to Consider the Present Organizations
of the Signal Service, Geological Survey, Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Hydrographic
Office of the Navy Department, with a View to Secure Greater Efficiency and Economy of
Administration…  49th Cong., 1st Sess., Senate, Misc. Doc. No. 82, Washington, Government
Printing Office, 1886, pp. 91-92, 248, 302-305.

15Abbe’s scientific vision in the 1870s prompted a research program by a handful of
researchers, that anticipated the whole research agenda of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration in the late 20th century, occupying some 1,000 scientists.

16 Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1872), p. 85.
17 Ibid. (1872), p. 86.
18 Loc. cit.
19 Ibid. (1874), p. 89.
20 Ibid. (1872), p. 86.
21 Ibid. (1872), p. 87.
22 Ibid. (1877), p. 136; U. S. Congress, Senate, Testimony before the Joint Commission,

op, cit., p. 249.
23 For a summary of this work see Fleming, Meteorology in America, op. cit., pp. 23-43.
24 Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1873), p. 309.
25 Loc. cit.
26 C. Abbe, “Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service”, op. cit., p. 5; Chief Signal

Officer, History of the Signal Service, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1884, pp. 4-5;
Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1891), Appendix 8, p. 338; Fleming, Meteorology in
America, op. cit., pp. 155-156.

27 Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1873), p. 309; (1875), p. 108.  These reports
continued annually after Lapham’s death in 1875, see for example Annual Report of the Chief
Signal Officer (1878), p. 169.

28 Ibid. (1875), p. 100.
29 Ibid. (1877), p. 130.
30 Ibid., pp. 132-133.
31 Ibid. (1875), p. 100; (1878), p. 166.
32 Ibid. (1873), p. 308.
33 Ibid. (1875), p. 108.
34 The Monthly Weather Review commenced uninterrupted publication in January, 1873

and remains a preeminent scientific journal. C. Abbe, “Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal
Service”, op. cit., pp. 23, 26.

35 Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1875), pp. 108, 374.
36 U.S. Army, Signal Corps, [Daily Journal], Study Room, MSS (1881-1884), I, pp. 1-2,

Rarebook Collection, NOAA Library, Silver Spring, MD, USA.
37 Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1872), pp. 84-85; (1873), pp. 308-309;

(1874), p. 88; (1875), pp. 108, 374;  (1876), pp. 301-335, 485ff; (1877), pp. 142, 433; (1878), pp.
168-169; (1879), pp. 188, 195.

38 Ibid. (1872), p. 87; (1887), p. 41.
39 Ibid., pp. 39-40; the bibliography was republished in James R. Fleming & Roy E.

Goodman, eds., International Bibliography of Meteorology, from the Beginning of Printing to
1889, Upland, PA, Diane Publishing Co., 1994.

40 Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer (1891), pp. 11-17.



Cleveland Abbe and the Birth of the National Weather Service 54

41 C. Abbe, “Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service”, op. cit., p. 25.
42 Abbe published some 290 papers during his lifetime, and the titles are listed in

Humphreys, “Biographical Memoir of Cleveland Abbe”, op. cit., pp. 489-508.
43 Ian R. Bartky, Selling the True Time: Nineteenth Century Timekeeping in America,

Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 2000, pp. 101-103, 130-136.
44 U. S. Congress, Senate, Testimony before the Joint Commission, op, cit., p. 1057.
45 Fleming, Meteorology in America, op. cit., p. xix.
46 U. S. Congress, Senate, Testimony before the Joint Commission, op, cit., pp. 247-252;

Whitnah, Weather Bureau, op. cit., p. 35.


