The History of the Beaufort Wind Scale

The crew at Royal National Lifeboat Institution asks us to imagine two farmers, one in Europe and the second in Kansas, observing a spinning anemometer and trying to determine if the rate of 37 rpm indicatedthat a "well-conditioned man-of-war" would be running with "Royals, &c" or reefed down to "Double reefed topsails, jib, &c."

This article, on the origins of the Beaufort wind scale Who put the speeds into Admiral Beaufort's force Table? involves a storm during the Siege of Sevastopol in 1854, two, what they call gadgets, the anemometer and the telegraph, the beginnings of a weather network and our old friend Admiral Beaufort.