Everybody talks about the weather

[Joel S. Berson]

Americans, at least, talked about the weather in the 18th and 17th
centuries, perhaps starting with Gov. John Winthrop in the 1630s and
1640s.  (In New England, everybody talks about the weather ... and
many wrote about it.)  It was the object of scientific study in the
18th century, such as by John Winthrop (the governor's
great-great-grandson), second Hollis Professor of Natural Philosophy
and Mathematics at Harvard.   "From 1742, he carefully recorded
temperature, barometric pressure, winds, and state of weather---three
times a day" (using, I think, instruments provided by endower Hollis
from England).  He was probably using a "Fahrenheit's thermometer" --
and by 1754 one was advertised for sale in a Boston newspaper, along
with two "botanic thermometers" (not in the OED) and a solar microscope.

As for comments like "Yes, I've never seen the temperature so high,"
"the Oldest Inhabitant" was regularly consulted and quoted, in books
and newspapers, again nearly from the first settlement.  In
1641-1642, Gov. Winthrop wrote "The frost was so great and continual
this winter that all the bay was frozen over, so much and so long, as
the like, by the Indians' relation, had not been these 40 years
...".  Cotton Mather also consulted the Oldest (Native American)
Inhabitants about the weather. The Boston newspapers of the 1730s
reported the recollections of "the oldest Persons among us," and I'm
sure a search in EAN would yield a number more.

Joel

At 1/29/2010 09:58 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>        First, no doubt people have always talked about the weather,
> but perhaps they did so more in the 19th C, because it had become
> the object of scientific study.  In the very early 19th C, NYC
> newspapers were publishing readings from "Fahrenheit's
> thermometer", and a bet later, from the barometer.  By the 1820s,
> this data could be a regular feature, every 3 days, or every week,
> perhaps compiled every month.  In 1832, a newspaper mentioned that
> a NYer had been taking and recording temperature and pressure since
> 1826.  So this would have made it possible to say "Isn't it warm --
> why, yesterday it was 87!"  "Yes, I've never seen the temperature
> so high." and so on; in Shakespeare's time, poor man, it would not
> have been possible to be so precisely informed.
>
>         [newspaper editor were generally in a state of constant
> bickering with the other editors in town; a response from the N-Y
> Daily Advertiser to the N-Y Gazette & General Advertiser: we do not
> want] a newspaper controversy with a man, whose literary and
> intellectual attainments are such as to enable him to record, from
> morning to morning, the state of the weather of each preceding day,
> and in at least half the instances to give a correct account of it.
>         N-Y D Advertiser, March 4, 1822, p. 2, cols. 2-3

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