Description

Close-up on the display case from GCP-00004651. This section of the display focuses on the Norwegian physicist Vilhelm Bjerknes. The largest section of text reads: "Bjerknes's Weather Mechanics. With the advent of the telegraph came widespread simultaneous weather reports. Forecasters drew weather charts, then made predictions by following the movement of weather conditions across them.

But Norwegian physicist Vilhelm Bjerknes saw that accurate forecasting would depend on mathematical techniques for describing atmospheric behavior. He shifted the focus of weather prediction back to problems of mechanics and physics.

However, the mathematical techniques Bjerknes sought did not appear until Lewis Fry Richardson developed them during World War I. And the technology for implementing them did not appear until the forties."

A photograph of Bjerknes and a copy of a diagram are accompanied by the caption, "Diagram from Bjerknes's Dynamic Meteorology and Hydrography, 1910. When the practicality of his work was challenged, Bjerknes replied: 'It may require many years to bore a tunnel through a mountain. Many a laborer may not live to see the cut finished. Nevertheless this will not prevent later comers from riding through the tunnel at express-train speed.' Bjerknes was still alive when the first numerical forecast based on his principles was made on ENIAC in 1950." Another caption is superimposed over an image of some fishermen: "During the First World War, Norway was cut off from food imports, as well as weather reports from outside Scandinavia. Convinced that he could improve weather forecasts for Norwegian fishermen and farmers, Bjerknes arranged to increase the number of reporting stations in southern Norway tenfold (from 9 to about 90 stations)."

Original credit line: Charles Eames