Illustrations

Illustrations featured on the ICHM homepage will be archived here. To have an illustration considered, please send an image as well as a short explanatory caption (~100 words) to the ICHM webmaster, rogert [at] sas.upenn.edu . Please only send images that are beyond copyright protection, or which the rights holders have authorized web publication.

September 2009

Many American towns produced postcards celebrating the local Weather Bureau office in the early part of the 20th century. The Meteorologist-in-Charge lived in the house, often with his family and servants, and supervised the instrument observations that were made there. These beautiful buildings were designed to fit the style of local architecture. This photo, of the Lansing, Michigan office, along with twenty-eight other historic postcards, can be found in the NOAA Photo Library online.

 

August 2009

 

Rare footage of a comic 1964 TV weather report from Savannah, Georgia, USA. Early TV meteorologists used cartoons as an pedagogical technique, but the association of comics with low culture helped transform the TV weather report from education to entertainment. These developments are discussed in "Keeping Meteorology Masculine: The American Meteorological Society's Response to TV ‘Weather Girls' in the 1950s," by Roger Turner, in Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life Conference Proceedings, Vladimir Jankovic and Christina Barboza, eds (Rio de Janeiro: MAST, 2009): 147-158.

June-July 2009

 

In China's active cloud seeding efforts, anti-aircraft guns are used to inject silver iodide into the atmosphere.   Beijing promises an intensive effort to clear the skies and divert rain when the city hosts the 2008 Olympics.  Source: James R. Fleming, "The Climate Engineers," Wilson Quarterly 31 (Spring 2007): 58.