“It contained only a few observations telegraphed from distant observers and announced ‘probabilities’ for the next day. This bulletin, in my own hand-writing, was posted prominently in the hall of the Chamber of Commerce, but unfortunately I had misspelled ‘Tuesday,’ and I soon found below my Probabilities the following humorous line by Mr. Davis, the well-known packer: ‘A bad spell of weather for “Old Probs.”’ This established my future very popular name of ‘Old Probs.’” The name has, however, been more particularly associated with Gen. Albert J. Myer, who, as Chief Signal Officer, was the first head of the Federal meteorological service. Desultory experiments in the collection of current weather reports and their use in constructing weather maps were first carried out in Europe at about the same time as the early undertakings of this character in America. Such reports were gathered and published by James Glaisher, with the cooperation of the British railways, in 1849. The existing national weather services of the Old World owe their origin to an episode of the Crimean War. In November, 1854, a violent storm wrought havoc among the French and British warships in the Black Sea and sank many vessels containing invaluable stores intended for the Allied armies in the Crimea. The French astronomer Le Verrier, director of the Observatory of Paris, collected information showing the progress of this storm across Europe, and the results of this inquiry were so significant that he submitted to the Emperor Napoleon III the plan of organizing an international system of telegraphic reports, by means of which timely warning could be obtained of similar atmospheric disturbances. The French Government, with the aid of other European countries, established such a system in 1855. Within the next two decades most of these countries organized their own services, and at the same time maintained an international exchange of observations by telegraph. Before the close of the nineteenth century nearly all the civilized countries of the world, including many colonial possessions, such as Canada, Australia, Algeria and the Philippines, had established meteorological services, entailing more or less extensive arrangements for collecting daily reports by telegraph and issuing storm warnings and weather forecasts. The chief exceptions were several of the Latin-American republics and the Ottoman Empire, in which such organizations are still lacking.