Albert J. Myer - Postbellum Career

Postbellum Career

The U.S. Congress, on February 9, 1870, authorized "... meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the states and territories of the United States, and for giving notice on the northern lakes and seaboard by telegraph and signals of the approach and force of storms". This duty, previously conducted by the Smithsonian Institution, was assigned to General Myer's Signal Corps, due in part to his previous interests in storm telegraphy. It was the birth of the U.S. Weather Bureau, now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1873 at the International Meteorological Congress of Vienna, he proposed a resolution for the establishment throughout the world of weather stations and daily exchange of simultaneous weather observations, the effective beginning of the World Meteorological Organization.

Myer was instrumental in the development of heliography in the U.S. Army. In 1877, he acquired heliograph instruments from the British Army for experimental purposes and sent them on to General Nelson A. Miles, at the Yellowstone Department in Montana. Miles developed expertise with the heliograph, which he used to great purpose in the Arizona Apache campaigns.

Myer headed the Signal Corps from August 21, 1867, until his death of nephritis at Buffalo, New York, in 1880. He is interred in the Walden-Myer Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.