Anderson risks fatiguing her readers by dwelling on every detail of her subject. But her narrative of early attempts to forecast the weather is interesting and so should encourage stamina. There was widespread enthusiasm for science in the early Victorian age. Attempts to forecast the weather attracted talent, satire and oddity – at the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, there was an “Atmospheric, Electro-magnetic Telegraph conducted by Animal Instinct”, which depended on the sensibilities of leeches in bottles.
Predicting the Weather
University of Chicago Press
