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The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies - Paperback | Diverse Reads

The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies

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Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

The early years of the nineteenth century saw an intriguing yet little-known scientific advance catapult a shy young Quaker to the dizzy heights of fame. The Invention of Clouds tells the extraordinary story of an amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard, and his groundbreaking work to define what had hitherto been random and unknowable structures—clouds.

In December 1802, Luke Howard delivered a lecture that was to be a defining point in natural history and meteorology. He named the clouds, classifying them in terms that remain familiar to this day: cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and nimbus. This new and precise nomenclature sparked worldwide interest and captured the imaginations of some of the century's greatest figures in the fields of art, literature, and science. Goethe, Constable, and Coleridge were among those who came to revere Howard's vision of an aerial landscape. Legitimized by the elevation of this new classification and nomenclature, meteorology fast became a respectable science.

Although his work is still the basis of modern meteorology, Luke Howard himself has long been overlooked. Part history of science, part cultural excavation, The Invention of Clouds is a detailed and informative examination of Howard's life and achievements and introduces a new audience to the language of the skies.

ISBN-13: 9780312420017

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Picador

Publication Date: 08-03-2002

Pages: 256

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.68(d)

Richard Hamblyn was born in 1965 and is a graduate of the universities of Essex and Cambridge, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on the early history of geology in Britain. He lives and works in London.

Read an Excerpt




Chapter One


The Theater of Science<

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Prologue: The Useless Pursuit of Shadows 1
1 The Theatre of Science 4
2 A Brief History of Clouds 15
3 The Cloud Messenger 33
4 Scenes from Childhood 40
5 The Askesian Society 62
6 Other Classifications 90
7 Publication 112
8 Growing Influence 141
9 Fame 166
10 The Beaufort Scale 184