Abstract
ABOUT a hundred years ago, Admiral Beaufort, having felt the want of some scheme by which the winds could be classified according to their force, devised a plan which has been in uninterrupted use ever since. In the absence of mechanical anemometers he had to trust to personal experience and the observed effects of wind on the objects moved by it. As a sailor, he naturally selected ships as the objects moved. Calling a calm zero, and representing a hurricane, or a wind in which no ship could carry any canvas, by 12, he endeavoured to assign the intermediate numbers to winds the force of which could be gauged by the amount of sail that a well-conditioned ship of specified rig could carry. In the lapse of time sailing ships altered their rigging or disappeared altogether, with the result that the gallant Admiral's nomenclature became obsolete or unmeaning. Anemometers depending upon the application of some mechanical principle came into general use, and from the fact that these instruments gave a continual record, right or wrong, their register tended to supersede a plan, which relied simply on tradition and probably varied in individual observers. But it has always been felt that there existed some relation between the records of the anemometer and the Beaufort Scale, and various authorities have attempted from time to time to bring the two into accord, or to supply the means of expressing any given number in the Beaufort Scale as velocity reckoned in miles per hour. These well-meaning attempts have not enjoyed the unquestioned confidence of meteorologists, nor have they ensured uniformity in practice. Of late the Meteorological Office has instituted a rigorous inquiry into the estimates of wind force as made in the Beaufort plan and as recorded by anemometers, and have now issued their report.
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P., W. The Beaufort Scale 1 . Nature 74, 106–107 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/074106a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/074106a0