Maury North Atlantic

Chart from volume 'Wind and Current charts' by Matthew Fontaine Maury. These charts combined information from hundreds of ship logs to help understand the climatology of the oceans.

On 17th October 1839 American naval Officer Matthew Fontaine Maury was severely injured in a stagecoach accident. It ended his seagoing career, and he was then put to work as Superintendent of the US Navy Depot of Charts and Instruments at the US Naval Observatory. He realised that he now had at his disposal thousands of observations about wind, weather and currents and that these could be of great use to seafarers if they were collated into a useable and shareable format. Maury also produced special charts and forms for American naval officers and seamen to continue sending in observations and brought all of this together in his Wind and Current Charts, leading to faster and safer voyages. Not content with this Maury felt that he could achieve more if he developed an international system.

The first International Meteorological Conference, instigated by Maury, went ahead in Brussels from 23 August – 8 September 1853. Twelve delegates represented ten nations: Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and the United States. By the end the delegates had agreed a code for observational practice at sea and the use of a standard meteorological register. This was probably the first international data sharing agreement in history. Other than a change from 2 to 4 hour observing intervals the process agreed by the delegates remains largely unchanged even today.

Following the conference a number of national meteorological services were founded in order to enable the agreements from the conference to be put into practice. The UK Meteorological Service was an ealy example - founded just a year later in 1854.