“Euery Cloud engenders not a Storme.”--Shakespeare, Henry VI, Pt. 3 (1623) v. iii. 10
“Vapour, previously unseen, makes its appearance as cloud, or mist, or fog.”--T. H. Huxley Physiogr. (ed. 2) 40
"But Howard gives us with his clearer mind
The gain of lessons new to all mankind;
That which no hand can reach, no hand can clasp,
He first has gain’d, first held with mental grasp.
Defin’d the doubtful, fix’d its limit-line,
And named it fitly.—Be the honour thine!
As clouds ascend, are folded, scatter, fall,
Let the world think of thee who taught it all."--Goethe, "Howards Ehrengedächtnis", 1821
HOWARD, Lucas. "Ueber die Modification der Wolken", in Annalen der Physik, I/21, 10th Stuck, 1805, pp 137-159, with the original wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume. Very Good condition. $500
The great cloud pioneer Luke Howard (1772-1864) first published on his cloud classifications in his papers "On the Modifications of Clouds and on the Principles of their Production Suspension and Destruction being the Substance of an Essay read before the Askesian1 Society in the Session 1802-3" in 1803, launching him from general normal obscurity into the ranks of the internationally known. He had done what Aristotle and many others down the years hadn't--classified (his "Modifications" of the title of his 11k-word effort) the moving mountains in the sky, making him a Linnaeus/Godfather of clouds, his nomenclature quickly adopted worldwide.
Howard, a pharmacist/chemist/meteorologist2 invoked a Latin nomenclature for his classification, which was a very smart idea, as Latin was already Latin (as it were) and didn't need to face the difficulties and obstructions of being translated into other languages, as was the case with the problematic Lamarckian system introduced just a year earlier which was phrased out in French and which encountered many problems in translation. Howard's universal nomenclature and his creative and poetic descriptions following deep study and endless sketches3 created a static environment from what was seen as an impossibly dynamic flow of changes in the structure of clouds.
According to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (the entry written by Richard Hambyn, the only person to write a book on Howard's naming of clouds), “...he proposed that every cloud belonged to one of three principal families, to which he had given the Latin names: cirrus (meaning “fiber” or “hair”), cumulus (“heap” or “pile”), and stratus (“layer” or “sheet”). In recognition of the essential instability of clouds, Howard also introduced a sequence of intermediate and compound modifications, such as cirrostratus and stratocumulus, in order to accommodate the regular transitions occurring between the cloud types...”
Notes:
1. "Askesian", meaning “philosophical exercise”, was “...a practically oriented and largely non-conformist group dedicated to natural and experimental philosophy”. http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/
2. According to the OED, “meteorology” goes back quite a way as a word, popping up in 1563; “meteoroloician” appears in 1580, and “meteorologist” in 1683.)
3. “The location of many of the sketches gives us an initial hint of their Romanticism. For many years Howard traveled between London and the Lake District in order to capture the full range of what he termed ‘cloud modifications’, training himself in the notoriously difficult art of depicting clouds, of fixing them as they changed “
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