History
In 1870 the Weather Bureau was established through a joint resolution of Congress signed by President Ulysses S. Grant with the mission "to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the States and Territories...and for giving notice on the northern (Great) Lakes and on the seacoast by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force of storms." The agency was placed under the Secretary of War because "military discipline would probably secure the greatest promptness, regularity, and accuracy in the required observations." Within the Department of War, it was assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corps under Brigadier General Albert J. Myer. General Myer gave the National Weather Service its first name: The Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce.
The agency first became a civilian enterprise in 1890, when it became part of the Department of Agriculture; it would later be moved to the Department of Commerce in 1940. The first Weather Bureau radiosonde was launched in Massachusetts in 1937, which went on to replace all routine aircraft observation within two years. The Bureau became part of the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA), when that agency was formed in August 1966. ESSA, in turn, was renamed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on 1 October 1970, with the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act. At this time, the Weather Bureau became the National Weather Service.
Read more about this topic: National Weather Service
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)