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

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Until the early nineteenth century, there was no unified system within any scientific or meteorological community for either naming or classifying clouds. The texts produced by nearly all ancient civilizations, the Chinese Shang Dynasty, and in addition Aristotle, Plato, and much later, Descartes, Linnaeus (much too rigidly) and many others had sought to analyze and describe clouds. Hamblyn notes that clouds' observed properties had been variously cited over time in order to reinforce the status quo in politics, philosophy, and religion - or to promote ideas (offensive to Napoleon among many others) about the zodiac, divination, and prophecy. Lamarck had attempted classification of clouds. He published vivid descriptions that were, as it turned out, of no real scientific use.

English amateur meteorologist Luke Howard had thought about this problem for quite some time. In 1802 he delivered his address, "On the Modification of Clouds," to a teeming lecture hall in London. His seven "modifications" of clouds were cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, cumulus, cumulostratus, nimbus, and stratus. (If you never have been able to memorize the list, you're in good company: contemporary complaints included the gripe that, innovative or not, "the seven 'easy ' names [were] doggedly difficult to remember.") Despite the Latin, his news was received with great enthusiasm - although there would eventually be controversy regarding nomenclature, with British colleagues urging the use of the mother tongue.

Howard described not only the look of clouds, but the specifics of their formation, structure and behavior. His lively audience was captivated by his simple, elegant, and wholly original view, and "by the end of the lecture Luke Howard, by giving language to nature's most ineffable and prodigal forms, had squared an ancient and anxiogenic circle." Howard had "named the clouds," and he was the first to have done so.

His system was useful to scientists, sailors, poets and philosophers - and just about everyone in between. Coleridge and Wordsworth were enthusiastic. Goethe wrote to Howard. (Howard thought the letter was a hoax, and dispatched a close friend to get to the bottom of it.) Later, Goethe would write poetry on clouds, and Constable would paint them

This is an unusual and beautiful book. Hamblyn is a humanitarian and a sensitive and skillful writer. He provides a deeply intimate and sympathetic biography of Howard, a good man for whom fame and celebrity was never the point of his life's work. (He was happy to take time off from science, for example, to tend to his wife and new baby in 1803.). Correspondence and contemporary accounts have been consulted. What could have been a rather dry, even plodding story becomes completely engrossing and full.

In addition, there is a thrilling and detailed portayal of the many towns and cities of nineteenth-century Britain (particularly London) that teemed with scientific lectures, "philosophical shows and diversions," cheering audiences eager to learn more, always more about "every animal, vegetable, mineral known to man, samples of all four elements, and challenges to all six senses, not to mention machines, inventions, and novelties of every kind, were regularly paraded before the eyes of an insatiable and astonished public."

The English scientific community's relationship to the French is explored. One of the many good things about this book is the way that it conveys the immense popular contemporary enthusiasm for science, technology, and innovation in nineteenth- century Britain. Hot-air ballooning, advances in the understanding of the properties of wind, fog, rain, and microclimate, Arctic exploration, and dozens of major and minor figures in the history of science are compellingly described and discussed. The meteorology is clear and requires little more readerly background than would a good look at the Weather Channel. There are good endnotes and a good index. In every way this book is a wonderful read, utterly accessible, and full of contagious passion for its very interesting subject.

Part of the overarching scientific revolution of the early nineteenth century was that we gained a language to talk about clouds, and surprisingly, this language was the invention of one man, an amateur meteorologist whose work is still the foundation for cloud observation today. The impressive and rather sweet story of how Luke Howard bequeathed clouds to scientific discussion and study is told in _The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies_ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Richard Hamblyn. You may not have heard of Howard, but you have spoken his language.

Howard was born to a Quaker family in 1772 in London. Perhaps the greatest influence in his life was his stern father, who would give advice like "What does idleness produce but mischief of every kind?" This advice he must have thought especially needed by his son, who had a lifelong passion for staring out the window and looking at the sky. Fortunately, Howard found work that allowed him to associate with other young men in a scientific improvement society, and he gradually developed his classification system. From his long hours of loving observation, he defined and illustrated three main cloud forms, now familiar to us: cirrus, cumulus, and stratus. There were intermediate forms, for a total of seven, which he also defined and illustrated. He presented his system in a lecture in 1802, at a time when popular lectures on chemistry and electricity would excite crowds into swooning enthusiasm. The drab, undramatic Howard, attired in his unadorned Quaker garb, modest and full of trepidation, managed to give a presentation of his categories illustrated by his watercolors. It was found thrilling first by the audience in the theater, and thereafter by those who found his essay in print. It is to the credit of the scientific ardor of the times that Howard's simple, effective, comprehension-amplifying definitions and classifications were a sensation. Howard, to his dismay, became "the well-known meteorologist Mr. Howard," a worldliness of fame that was in conflict with his strong Quaker convictions.

Howard's work went on to inspire Francis Beaufort to classify wind speed in a comparable objective fashion, and we still use a version of Beaufort's scale today. It seems that the landscape painter Constable studied Howard's system and used it in his depictions of sky. It inspired Europe's greatest intellectual icon, Goethe, aging but rejuvenated just at the contemplation of Howard's system. In fact, we know little of Howard's life, most of his personal details coming from a biographical letter the admiring Goethe asked of him. In _The Invention of Clouds_, Hamblyn has taken the facts of Howard's life, made some justifiable and tantalizing speculations, and produced a fine history of the scientific tenor of Howard's time. But it is above all the inspiring story, brightly and clearly told, of a dreamer who could not keep from staring out the window at the skies.

Richard Hamblyn does an immaculate job of painting the picture of the world of almost two hundred years ago, opening with the presentation room as it must have appeared to Luke Howard, the inventor of our current system of naming clouds. He takes what has since come to be a dull and pedantic topic and re-invigorates it with the Victorian Zeitgeist, including quotes from Goethe, passages from Howard's diary, and the unfortunate results of political infighting among society-academics unrivalled since the age of Newton and Voltaire. The book is also beautifully presented in a half-height format suitable for either the coffee table or the reference shelf. Bravo!

"The Invention of Clouds" is an endearing little book about a generally forgotten moment in the history of science. It seems obvious to us today but until Englishman Luke Howard, a chemist with an interest in the then-young science of meteorology, gave a public lecture on cloud classification in London in 1802, nobody had been able to categorize cloud formations in an easily-understood and consistent manner. The terms we take for granted-cumulus, cirrus, stratus and so forth-were applied by the 30 year-old Howard for the first time. He drew upon his classical education to find suitable Latin names for what he termed "the modifications of clouds." He understood that clouds pass through stages and in his lecture he described the changes they underwent. His audience understood immediately the importance of his lecture and it was published soon afterwards to great acclaim.

Luke Howard became famous throughout the world. It is clear that he must have viewed this with mixed feelings. As a modest Quaker, he did not seek celebrity but as a scientist he was undoubtedly proud of his accomplishment. It is a beautiful achievement. By naming that which was ever-present but unnamed, Luke Howard helped forge the language of meteorology and provided some of the most important tools for weather observation and forecasting. His Latin names speak to the universality of climate and his detractors, who felt that the classifications should have been in English, were soon silenced. The book describes the reaction of artists as well. On the one hand, there were those who believed that clouds, as objects of great natural beauty and a symbol of freedom, would lose something by being systematically classified, as if they were species of beetles, but others, including the painter Constable, used the classification of the clouds as a basis for their art. The great genius of the period, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, completely enchanted by Luke Howard's work and personality, dedicated a series of marvellous poems to him, with each stanza based on one of the new cloud-forms.

But even having poetry dedicated to you by Goethe is not enough to claim enduring fame. Luke Howard seems to have lived a quiet existence, marked by some success in business and a happy family life. He died at the age of 91, remembered fondly by only his relatives. Richard Hamblyn, in writing this book, must have struggled to develop enough material as it appears that the lecture of 1802 was the high point of Luke Howard's scientific life and his attention was then taken up more by commerce and religious issues. Mr. Hamblyn gives us a history of the earlier attempts to define clouds, reaching back to Aristotle. He throws in the story of the Beaufort Wind Scale, which was inspired by but not as readily-accepted as Luke Howard's cloud system. He deals with the subsequent amendments to the cloud classifications and we learn of the International Meterological Conference and its winsomely-named Cloud Committee, which was to produce the International Cloud Atlas.

All very interesting, but it is in the sections about Luke Howard and his contemporaries, fascinated by the rapid progress in science at the end of the 18th Century, where the book is most alive. Richard Hamblyn ably paints a picture of London's crowded lecture halls where science was popular culture, of dangerous experiments and fantastic personalities. Men of brilliant and adventurous minds, often denied higher education due to their religion, could look into the future and stake a claim. The author, in sharing Luke Howard's triumph with us, has written an elegant work brimming with enthusiasm.

This book is a fascinating look at the origin of the most basic element in meteorology, the names of clouds. A fascinating insight into Science and the role of the Amateur in the early 19th century.

A young man, obsessed with clouds and their formation, makes a detailed study of them. All this has been done before, but never in such a concise, visionary way, nor with a naming convention as brilliant in its simplicity, expressiveness and utility as Luke Howard's.

His story is dealt with in a series of chapters that digress from the main thrust of the book to outline the history of the philosophical changes that were taking place, in Europe particularly. Almost any cockeyed idea found a ready audience, who were equally ready to dismiss ideas out-of-hand. The trick was presentation. Many of the famous names in science at the end of the 18th century were showmen, financing their researches by giving displays or private shows... getting your name known was half the battle.
Luke Howard was born into a world where being in the right place at the right time meant more than any social connections or political clout.
But, being a Dissenter, he had no formal education, no political clout and no social connections - not much chance for him to get his ideas aired, it seemed. Nor was he a showman - his Quaker upbringing saw to that - so luck, and dedication, came to his assistance.

Philosophical societies and journals were in their infancy, and were ready to embrace anyone who could increase membership or circulation. This was the chance, and in an hour-long presentation, young Howard captivated his audience and introduced a naming system for clouds, which is still in use today, 200 years on. This was what meteorology had been waiting for - a standard method of logging cloud formations. This was invaluable too for poets and writers, who suddenly found a new addition to their descriptive vocabulary. Small wonder that cirrus, cumulus and nimbus quickly entered everyday conversation (the Englishman's main topic being the weather).

The book is very well written, giving us a feel for the social, political and philosophical climate in the Napoleonic era. By various pertinent descriptions of people and events directly and indirectly connected with Howard, we are introduced to some of the greats of the Age of Enlightenment; but none of it feels contrived or beside the point, nor is it ever boring.

This is an enthralling read, illustrating how easily a single person or idea can change the direction and thrust of a science... Well worth reading.

Luke Howard was an amateur in the true sense of the word; Luke Howard named the clouds for the love of them. Richard Hamblyn does a fine job telling the story of Luke Howard's life, his naming of the clouds, and Howard's milieu in the book The Invention Of Clouds. Howard, a Quaker and a pharmacist, went from unknown working man to celebrity when he presented his paper "On The Modifications Of Clouds" to the Askesian Society in London on a night in December of 1802. The paper had the right combination of insights, poetry, and luck to insure that the terms cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and nimbus [or derivatives] are still being used by meteorologists today. Hamblyn's weave of biography, history, art, and science was enjoyable to read and held together most of the time [Chapter 10: The Beaufort Scale was not as well connected to book as the rest of the material]. The hardback is such a beautiful and unusual book, I shelved my copy, waited for the paperback to read it, and then donated the paperback to the high school library. I highly recommend The Invention Of Clouds to anyone with an interest in meteorology, history, Quakerism, or biography.

I went to to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last month, and among the many great authors I heard speaking, Richard Hamblyn stood out among the best. He spoke about clouds, mathematics, literature, art, religion, balloons.... I was not surprised when The Invention of Clouds won the coveted LA Times Book Prize. It's so full of wonderful things. This is a must read book.

This is a wonderful book about a wonderful subject. I don't normally read science books, but this one seemed to be about so much more than clouds. It covers art, poetry, travel and religion: there is even a section on the history of ballooning. It's very well written and full of enthusiasm for the subjects covered. I warmly recommend this book.

This book takes you to England of around 1800, when a young amateur scientist managed to come up with the nomenclature we use to this day to classify clouds. The life of Luke Howard is fascinating in and of itself as he goes about his scientific and business dealings. The author also notes why Mr. Howard's system became the system used today, even though it was only one of several major attempts to classify clouds as meteorology became more systematic. The book covers its topic well and would be of interest to anyone interested in the history of meteorology or scientific inquiry.