The Invention of Clouds
How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An extraordinary yet little-known scientific advance occurred in the opening years of the nineteenth century when a young amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard, gave the clouds the names by which they are known to this day. By creating a language to define structures that had, up to then, been considered random and unknowable, Howard revolutionized the science of meteorology and earned the admiration of his leading contemporaries in art, literature and science.
Richard Hamblyn charts Howard’s life from obscurity to international fame, and back to obscurity once more. He recreates the period’s intoxicating atmosphere of scientific discovery, and shows how this provided inspiration for figures such as Goethe, Shelley and Constable. Offering rich insights into the nature of celebrity, the close relationship between the sciences and the arts, and the excitement generated by new ideas, The Invention of Clouds is an enthralling work of social and scientific history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though clouds, in their many shifting forms, have long intrigued humanity, it has taken millennia of observation, and the rise of the scientific method in the West, for these heavenly phenomena to be explained. Hamblyn, a professional geologist from England, deftly introduces readers to this fascinating development in the history of natural science and to an unusual, diffident, amateur scientist. As a young student in 1783, Luke Howard, a young Quaker Englishman, had watched ominous clouds from his classroom window that were the result of recent volcanic eruptions that not only altered the appearance of the skies, but temporarily changed the climate around the world. Toward the end of 1802, as the Romantic era loomed, he read his seminal treatise on meteorology, "On the Modifications of Clouds," to an audience of friends and interested associates in a small, dank basement in the Plough Court Laboratory. The presentation was the first time the scientific names of clouds were coined, explained and pronounced to the public. The work presented that night influenced contemporary poets and artists as much as scientists. Now, nearly two centuries later, cirrus, cumulus, stratus, nimbus, etc. are commonplace terms. Peppered with literary allusions and anecdotes, and packaged in a unique trim size, this quirky (in the best British sense of that word) book is a delight for those interested in natural science and the lives of scientists. Illus.
