Weather Bureau
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Weather Bureau. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a service for forecasting weather conditions. Such service, more or less satisfactory, is maintained in some degree, at least, by all civilized nations. In 1873 the federal government organized a service for the benefit of American shipping. The work was entrusted to the signal corps of the army. In 1891 the present United States Weather Bureau was established as a branch of the department of agriculture. The duties of the bureau are set forth in the act of Congress: The Chief of the Weather Bureau shall have charge of forecasting the weather; the issue of storm warnings; the display of weather and flood signals for the benefit of agriculture, commerce, and navigation; the gaging and reporting of rivers; the maintenance and operation of sea coast telegraph lines and the collection and transmission of marine intelligence for the benefit of commerce and navigation; the reporting of temperature and rainfall conditions for the cotton interests; the display of frost, cold wave, and other signals; the distribution of meteorological information in the interest of agriculture and commerce; and the taking of such meterological observations as may be necessary to establish and record the climatic conditions of the United States, or are essential for the proper execution of the foregoing duties. The bureau maintains about 200 stations scattered throughout the United States and the West Indies . Each is in charge of one or more trained observers. They are provided with standard barometers, thermometers, wind-vanes, rain and snow gages, and, in some cases, with sunshine recorders and moisture gages. Twice a day or oftener they telegraph the Washington office accurate information as to atmospheric conditions. Daily reports are received also from Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Honolulu, United Kingdom , France, Germany, Portugal, Russia, Siberia, Iceland, and the Azores. Each station is a distributing center of information, but forecast centers are maintained in Boston, Washington, New Orleans , Louisville, Denver, San Francisco , and Portland, Oregon. About ten o'clock daily weather indications are telegraphed 2,100 distributing points, and are sent out by mail, telegraph, and telephone. In 1909 there were about 160,000 mail and over 1,000,000 telephone subscribers. In changeable, showery weather, when a rain in one township may be accompanied by a bright day in an adjacent township, a farmer cannot know, indeed, to a certainty, whether to cut his hay or not; but the field is covered so completely that the farmer is able to learn in advance the approach of heavy, prolonged rains, continued, dry weather, frosts, and blizzards. The shipper may know whether it is safe to load fruit, eggs, or vegetables in an unprotected car. Market gardeners are warned to protect their gardens. The orange growers of California and Florida have invested heavily in screens and tents, which they use to protect their trees when warned that a cold wave is coming. Railroad superintendents watch for the signal to get their snowplows ready, and steamboat captains venture another trip, or tie up for the winter. Those engaged in cutting ice study the bulletins with care. Many seaboard storms originate in the West Indies. If they are headed our way, the news is sent ahead by telegraph. In fact, a storm can hardly reach our coast from any direction without word coming ahead. Storm signals--over 300 in all--fly in every considerable port and harbor of the Atlantic, the Gulf, the Pacific, and the Great Lakes. Sailings are deferred or hastened in accordance with storm forecasts. Our service costs (1909) $1,300,000 a year. The saving of property cannot be known, but $30,000,000 is a modest estimate. A single West Indian hurricane may send several million dollars to the bottom of the sea. In addition to posting daily bulletins in postoffices and other public places, signals are given by means of flags. There are six well known flags. A square white flag indicates fair weather; a blue flag, rain or snow; a flag half white, half blue, local snow or showers; a white flag with a black square in the center, a cold wave; a red flag with a central black square, high wind and snow. A triangular black flag indicates temperature. Displayed above a blue flag, it indicates rain and warmer; below a blue flag, it means rain and colder. See Cyclone ; Anemometer ; Barometer ; Clouds; Rain ; Sunshine ; Salton Sea ; Wind ; Ice , etc. Observatory on the Zug. Meteorological stations
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the govern ment office maintained by all civilized nations for the systematic observing and predicting of the weather from day to day. Many of these were established before weather predictions were considered practicable or even possible, and in such offices the original object of the institution was the collection of climatic statistics considered as an important item in the description of the country and the study of its agriculture, diseases, and other vital phenomena. Of such older statistical bureaus may be instanced the Meteorological Division of the Suregon-General's Office, U. S. A., of the Statistical Bureau in Berlin, of the Observatory at St. Central Physical Ob Petersburg, and of the office of the Registrar-General, London. Some of these climatic bureaus have had their scope enlarged by the imposition of the additional duty of weather and storm predictions, but in most cases an entirely new office has been established for this ; such, for instance, are the special wor work Meteorological Office in London, founded in 1861 under the Board of Trade, and now under the administration of of the Royal Society, the Meteorological Division of the Astronomical Observatory at Paris, enlarged in 1859, and now transferred to the Meteorological Bureau of France; the Seewarte at Hamburg, 67, now in part transferred founded in 1867, to the Royal Meteorological Institute for Saxony at Berlin; the Central Office for Meteorology at Rome; the Meteorolog ical Office of the Customs Bureau at Hong Kong; the office of the Meteorological Reporter for India at Calcutta; the Imperial Signal Office at Tokio, Japan; and the Weather Bureau, formerly of the Signal Office in the Depart- WEASEL ment of War at Washington, but now a part of the Department of Agriculture. The appointment of official predicters in all countries whose territories are suffi ciently well covered by telegraph tions is at once a demonstrou revolution that has taken place in our ideas with regard to the utility of meteorology, concerning which science it is only a comparatively few years since prominent astronomers and physicists expressed grave doubts as to the value of the great accumulation of observations, and as to the possibility of developing anything more than a crude and useless guess as to the weather of the forthcoming day.