Patent Office Ends Partnership with Smithsonian on Meteorological Program
Close
Download IIIF ManifestRequest permissionsDownload image PrintID:
Creator:
Form/Genre:
Date: May 1860
Citation:
A new Commissioner of Patents, Philip Francis Thomas, terminates the U.S. Patent Office's support of the Smithsonian's meteorology program. Since July 1855, the Patent Office had printed blank registers for volunteer weather observers, allowed use of its franking privilege (or permission for mail to be sent without postage) to distribute blanks, provided some instruments, and helped pay for data reduction costs. The Patent Office would continue to use its franking privilege to receive forms from observers on the Smithsonian's behalf for the next two years. In 1862, the Agriculture Department would begin distributing and collecting blanks for the Smithsonian and publishing some of the Institution's meteorological observations in the department's monthly bulletin on crops and the weather. In 1860, the Smithsonian devotes some $4,400, or thirty percent of its research and publication budget, to meteorology. Its network of weather observers has expanded to five hundred people throughout the country.
Chronology of Smithsonian History
Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, 600 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024-2520, SIHistory@si.edu
May 1860