Up for auction "Time Zone Advocate" Cleveland Abbe Hand Written 3X4 Note. This item is authenticated By Todd
Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.
ES-5177
Cleveland Abbe (December 3, 1838 – October 28, 1916)
was an American meteorologist and advocate of time zones. While director of the
Cincinnati Observatory in Cincinnati, Ohio, he developed a system of
telegraphic weather reports, daily weather maps, and weather forecasts. In
1870, Congress established the U.S. Weather Bureau and inaugurated the use of
daily weather forecasts. In recognition of his work, Abbe, who was often
referred to as "Old Probability" for the reliability of his
forecasts, was appointed the first head of the new service, and is considered
the father of the National Weather Service. Cleveland Abbe was born in New York
City and grew up in the prosperous merchant family of George Waldo and
Charlotte Colgate Abbe. One of his younger brothers, Robert, became a prominent
surgeon and radiologist. In school, Cleveland excelled in mathematics and
chemistry, attending David B. Scott Grammar School, and graduating in 1857 from
the Free Academy with a Bachelor of Arts.[5] While at City College, he learned
under Oliver Wolcott Gibbs. He tutored mathematics at the Trinity Latin School
in New York City in 1857 and 1858. He then taught engineering, as an assistant
professor at the University of Michigan in 1859, followed by a tutoring job,
also in engineering, until he left in 1860. During this stay in Michigan, he
also was studying astronomy under Franz Brünnow from 1858 to 1859. He received
his second degree, a Master of Arts in 1860, from City College. When the Civil
War broke out, he tried to join the Union Army; however, he failed the vision
test, due to myopia, and spent the war years in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
attending Harvard, and working as an assistant to Benjamin Gould, astronomer
and head of the Longitude Department of the United States Coast Survey. He
received his Bachelor of Science degree from Harvard in 1864, which also marked
the end of his working at the US Coast Survey. It was while in Cambridge that
he rubbed shoulders with scientists from the Nautical Almanac, specifically,
William Ferrel, which probably piqued his meteorological curiosity. He then
studied abroad in Russia at the Observatory of Pulkovo, as a guest, and
returned, in 1866, to the U.S. eager to study astronomy.