Picture an immense concert hall filled with 64,000 computers - not machines but people who compute figures. This entire hall functions as a map: "The ceiling represents the north polar regions. England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia in the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit." As weather data pours in from around the world, coloured stage lights cue the human computers to work in unison. Towering above them in a pulpit is "a conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand." Lewis Fry Richardson's fanciful proposal for a "slide-rule orchestra" was the culminating vision of one of the most ambitious attempts ever made at weather forecasting.
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