Customer Reviews

Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Defining The Wind by Scott Huler is a special book that combines two of my loves in life - earth science and language. Huler, a writer who is NOT a science writer by trade, fell in love with the Beaufort [Wind] Scale in 1983 while a copy editor scanning a copy of the dictionary. He was so impressed with the 110 words of the scale and their simple but poetic qualities, he embarked on an extended intellectual journey to discover the scale's author. Defining The Wind is Huler's wonderful retelling of that journey. Along the way, Huler learns to draw, learns to help sail a tall ship, and rummages through many a dusty archive. Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that Huler discovers that Francis Beaufort did not write the version of the scale that Huler fell in love with. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in meteorology, surveying, the ocean, sailing tall ships, history, or the use of language in science. Random thought: I wonder if this would be a good book to give to a teenage writer or artist who doesn't see the benefit of taking science and math classes in high school?

This is a thoroughly engaging true-life detective story. The author, Scott Huler, was struck by the poetic beauty of the Beaufort Scale, a way to determine the force and velocity of the wind by how it moves objects, i.e. "small trees in leaf begin to sway - MPH 19-24 - Name, fresh breeze - Beaufort # 5. He set out to discover the art of Sir Francis Beaufort. Through his search he shines a light on the what the essence of poetry is and the fact that nothing is born of itself.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It is a vivid introduction into the life of times of Admiral Beaufort, and the history of defining the wind. This book was well worth the money and the time to read it. It awakens in the reader the spirit of discovery and exploration that imbued Beauforts age. Mr. Huler gets a bit sentimental about his subject which detracts a bit from the story (hence 4 not 5 starts). Bottom line: you'll enjoy it.

For an author who repeatedly touches on his admiration of the beauty of the writing Admiral Beaufort brought to the wind scale, the writing style of "Defining the Wind" falls short for me. It seems the author couldn't quite decide if the book was an academic text or a popular history volume and the inconsistency grated on me. Especially the use of pop culture references feels gratuitous (e.g. use of "white Ford Bronco" for a simile for a slow moving sailing ship) and makes a book that could be readable for years seem dated almost out of the wrapper. The book also seems very repetitive. The same source text is referenced often in chapters that seemingly are about a new topic. I think the book was worth reading, I just found the author and the writing style came to the forefront much too often as I read instead of the content and Admiral Beaufort himself.

This book has a little something for everybody - for historians, it has a little science; for scientists a little history, for the rest of us an amusing story of the fun of losing oneself in research. I enjoyed learning some history not just of Beaufort, but of the time in which he lived, particularly of the state of science at that time. Plus, even as a land lubber I found the sailing info interesting.

Huler seemed a bit breathless about his personal discovery of how important it is to keenly observe one's world. This, coupled with his occasional inaccurate use of terms like "fission," betrays that the author is an arts guy not a sciences guy. (Although unlike our president, I would bet that Huler does know the difference between "nukuler" energy and "nuclear" energy.) The inaccuracies would be less grating if Huler realized that carefully observing one's world is quite a natural activity for the science-oriented segment of his reading audience, and probably for a big chunk of the rest of his readers.

Short of the proselytizing about this observing stuff, I found the book informative, and it threw some perspective on the evolution of thought during the 18th and 19th centuries. Overall, an enjoyable read if you just let the overdone parts breeze by.

The first seven reviews cover both the pleasures and problems with this book. For me, the major disappointment was in the almost cavalier way that the author dispenses with the actual writer of the 110 words of descriptions that inspired his research into Beaufort and everyone/everything associated with that amazing character. After over 200 pages of so much detail and background, all we are told about the 'North Shields observer' takes up less than 4 pages. I for one would have loved to have seen more examples of this person's writing style! It is a mystery to me why neither the author nor his agents would have thought a more complete description of the community, buildings and people involved would have been a natural 'fit' with the rest of the story.

The author salvaged (for me at least) a fourth star with his closing chapter on the 'Beaufort moment'; the act of true interaction and awareness of the world around us instead of relying on pure data alone. His observation that technology alone will never take the place of personal observation and involvement is something to remember and cherish, and ALMOST makes me forgive his skating over the true writer of the scale's poetic text.

An enjoyable read, a wonderful book to dip into and savor, worth discovering for all the 'degrees of separation' that connect Beaufort with other prominent names from that time in history.

One of those bizarre little books we often find in our local (independent)bookstore. While it does give the background and construction of the Beaufort Wind Scale, it's more about the men who believe that "nature, rightly questioned, never lies." Men like Darwin,Defoe, Capt Cook and all the explorers of the 18th century. What started the author on his quest was not so much the scale as the description of the wind at different speeds. He's teaching us that you can learn more by observing than by measuring. Sometime, look in the dictionary at the wind scale descriptions. You're more likely to remember "wind extends light flag" than Beaufort #3 at 4-7 miles per hour. This book is great for writers and artists who really need to learn to not only look but to see.

The Beaufort Scale encourages us to pay attention. This book is a history of the Beaufort Scale, a descriptive list of categories by which to define wind. Surprisingly poetic and elegantly precise, the Beaufort Scale is used by sailors, meteorologists, kiters, and anyone just fascinated with wind. With descriptions of smoke, leaves, branches, trees, umbrellas and inland waters, the 1906 Beaufort Scale classifies wind strength from 0-12. The author's wry wit flavors the text which chronicles in depth the mysterious genius Admiral Francis Beaufort, the history of wind measurement, the development of the Beaufort Scale, and its unexpected influence on poetry, music, and art. The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale and the Fujita-Pearson tornado scale we hear of on the evening news are, in their elegant descriptive simplicity, descendants of the Beaufort Scale.

I read Mr. Huler's short piece on the wonders of the Beaufort Scale in a NYT op-ed a few years ago, and it was so good, I ran right out for the book. It was even better than I'd hoped -- a delightful, delightful adventure of the mind, and side-aching hilarious at times. I wasn't disappointed by the short section on the "real" inventor of the scale, because although Mr. Huler's research and the adventures it entailed are fascinating, that wasn't the point of the book at all to me. He gets so much into this little book; I learned everything from the life of a copywriter to the mystery of how science changed in the 19th Century (and no one really knows why). Best of all was spending a little time in the company of someone who can look at a wind velocity scale and see a haiku. Thank you, Mr. Huler, for teaching me how to read!

As a child, I owned a book about storms. I don't recall much of the specifics, but I do remember a table categorizing the different wind forces. Though I didn't really think much of it at the time, this was the Beaufort Scale, which creates 13 categories for wind, from 0 - Calm to 12 - Hurricane. Each force is defined by not only a wind speed but also a description; for example, Calm is described as "calm; smoke rises vertically." For Scott Huler, the Beaufort Scale is the best piece of descriptive writing ever, a blend of science and poetry; his adoration of the Scale resulted in Defining the Wind.

Defining the Wind is an ode to and a history of the Beaufort Scale. Of course, one of the principal parts of this history would be Beaufort himself, and Huler's biography of this British admiral is one component of the book. Francis Beaufort did a lot of wonderful hydrographic and cartographic work for the British navy in the first part of the nineteenth century. His role in developing the Beaufort Scale, however, was only partial.

Huler gives us the history of the Scale. Beaufort was not the first to develop such a scale, but he did implement the zero-to-twelve system and came up with descriptions that focused more on the sea than the land. The actual wording of the modern Beaufort Scale - which can be found in most full-sized dictionaries - was created a half-century after Beaufort's death. Even the attachment of his name to the Scale was done after he died, so it isn't like he really tried to steal the idea for his own glory; he merely improved on existing scales for the benefit of the Navy (and science).

The big lesson in the book is the importance of description in scales. Most people like to break things down into an organized fashion. We love lists - the top ten songs or the top 100 movies - and we enjoy scales. Even the Amazon reviewing system employs a scale - from one to five stars - and we often use the scale to make judgments about what to buy (or see or eat). But the Amazon scale is truly subjective: what three stars means varies from person to person.

What the Beaufort scale does is not only provide a quantitative value for a certain type of wind (for example, a gentle breeze is 8-12 miles per hour), but also a qualitative one ("leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends a light flag"). The difference between a gentle and light breeze is not only no longer subjective, it can also be seen by those who don't have an anemometer. It's as if a four-star Amazon review was defined as "a book of 500+ pages with at least seven characters and twenty chapters"; that might be a silly definition in the case of a book review, but at least people would know exactly what they were getting (of course, in that case, no "average" rating would be required).

Although Defining the Wind does ramble a bit in places, overall Huler has done an excellent job in making a subject interesting that most people don't even really think about. If you like reading about weather-related topics (or have a scientific or historical bent), this can be a fun book to read.