Institution should not become the permanent agency for such
scientific work once its permanency had been decided upon. Smithsonian
meteorology had not involved self-recording instruments, and neither did
that of the Signal Corps at the outset "because of the expense of the
apparatus, and because nothing of that kind was at that time
manufactured in this country."[19]

But almost immediately after 1870 the Signal Corps undertook an
evidently well-financed program for the introduction of
self-registration. "Complete outfits" were purchased, representing
Wild's system, the Kew system as made by Beckley, Hipp's system (fig.
8), Secci's meteorograph (figs. 9, 10), Draper's system, and Hough's
printing barograph and thermograph. Of these only the Kew system, the
photographic system already mentioned, could have been obtained before
1867.

[Illustration:

Scale about 1-16th.

BAROGRAPH, OR
SELF-RECORDING MERCURIAL BAROMETER, L68.

Figure 6.--Photographic registering mercurial barometer, typical
commercial version. (From J. J. Hicks, _Catalogue of ... Meteorological
Instruments_, London, n.d., about 1870.)]

Like Kew, Daniel Draper's observatory in Central Park, New York City,
was established primarily for meteorological observation.[20] Draper was
one of the sons of the prominent scientist J. W. Draper. Hipp was an
instrument-maker of Neuchatel who specialized in precision clocks.[21]
The others after whom these "systems" were named were directors of
astronomical observatories, which were, at this time, the most active
centers of meteorological observation. Wild was at the Bern
Observatory,[22] Secci at the Papal Observatory, Rome,[23] and George
Hough at the Dudley Observatory, Albany, New York.[24] While the Signal
Corps seems to have acquired all of the principal "systems," some
interesting instruments were developed at still other observatories,
notably by Kreil at the astronomical observatory in Prague.[25] The
principal impetus for this full-scale mechanization of observation
undoubtedly came from the directors of astronomical observatories.

Thus within little more than the decade of the 1860's were developed
five new systems of meteorological self-registry that were sufficiently
well thought of to be adopted or copied by observatories outside their
places of origin. Wild and Draper tell us that it was decided when their
respective observatories were established--in 1860 and 1868--that all
instruments sh