Meteorology after the Weather Map: Materiality, Weather Cartography, and the Creation of Meteorological Communities (1870-1930)

The weather map has a crucial role in the history of meteorology. As Napier Shaw (1854-1945) noted in his History of Meteorology, the weather map had created a new generation of meteorologists after the first individual founders of the discipline in the early modern period. While historians have already examined the importance of weather and climate maps as tools to represent the weather, this paper focuses on the materiality of weather maps. By taking weather maps as historical and material actors, rather than just as illustrations of weather phenomena, I highlight how their production shaped the international community of meteorology in the nineteenth and twentieth century. By mandating collaboration among scientists and amateur meteorologists across national boundaries, the materiality of weather maps allowed meteorologists to understand – rather than just to visualize – the weather as a shared experience and contribute to the international globalization of meteorology at the turn of the century. In short, I argue that there was a meteorology before and after the weather map. Thus, this paper examines the relationship between the material production of weather maps and the assemblage of national and international communities. By comparing the transformation of weather maps before, during and after the Great War in Italy, France and Germany, the paper will use the lens of the materiality to reveal the transformation of the international community of meteorology between the turn of the century and the interwar period.