In the middle of the 19th century … the Smithsonian Institution supplied weather instruments to 150 volunteers to create an extensive observation network.
By 1860, 500 stations were delivering weather reports by telegraph to Washington and Cincinnati … helping warnings go out more quickly.
But a scientist and Wisconsin historian Increase A. Lapham lobbied Congress and the Smithsonian to establish an agency to predict weather after witnessing the destructive nature of storms on the Great Lakes.
So in 1869, Wisconsin Congressman Halbert E. Paine introduced a bill to establish a weather warning service under the Secretary of War.
The National Weather Service was born a year later, establishing a system to warn ships at sea about impending inclement weather and to bring forecasts to the daily lives of people in the U.S.
