Increase A. Lapham

1895

The father of the weather bureau service was Increase A. Lapham, a modest and retired but ripe scholar, who lived in Milwaukee. He was the first to note by telegraph the progress of the wind currents and storms and to predict their appearance in specified neighborhoods. On the strength of a weather dispatch from Omaha, in 1869 or thereabouts, he announced the first storm on Lake Michigan that ever was heralded 12 hours in advance of its arrival. The first work of the weather bureau was under his charge in Chicago. It was on the small beginnings of Dr. Lapham that the entire system of the signal service was based. Dr. Lapham died in 1875. — New York Ledger.