DE-FIN-INGTHEWIND:THE BEAUFORT SCALE,AND HOWA 19TH-CENTURY ADMIRAL TURNED SCIENCE INTO POETRY

摘要

The ever-blowing wind within the atmosphere around our globe is commonly felt, and its strength is communicated day by day: as a full vector quantity, or just by its speed, or, at least, in those French sounding grades—Beaufort. Is there genuine interest in when, how, and through whom mankind eventually came to grips with the difficulty of meaningfully classifying the force of wind? Apparently a lot of such interest exists. Those following the development of geophysical sciences could in recent years witness a refreshing breeze through their minds generated by well-written stories about important—though not well-known—early evelopments centered around one person. The clock maker John Harrison in Dava Sobel's book, Longitude, and the pharmacist Luke Howard in Richard Hamblyn's monograph, The Invention of Clouds, provide such examples, which were widely recognized by a general readership as well as by specialists. I came to wonder how Scott Huler's latest opus, centered on a proper British admiral, competes in this class of nonfiction literature: as a really strong breeze or only as a touch of light air?