Albert J. Myer

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Albert J. Myer bigraphy, stories - Union Army general

Albert J. Myer : biography

September 20, 1828 – August 24, 1880

Albert James Myer (September 20, 1828 – August 24, 1880) was a surgeon and United States Army officer. He is known as the father of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, as its first chief signal officer just prior to the American Civil War, the inventor of wig-wag signaling (or aerial telegraphy), and also as the father of the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Postbellum career

The U.S. Congress, on February 9, 1870, authorized "… meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the states and territories of the United States, and for giving notice on the northern lakes and seaboard by telegraph and signals of the approach and force of storms". This duty, previously conducted by the Smithsonian Institution, was assigned to General Myer’s Signal Corps, due in part to his previous interests in storm telegraphy. It was the birth of the U.S. Weather Bureau, now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.. In 1873 at the International Meteorological Congress of Vienna, he proposed a resolution for the establishment throughout the world of weather stations and daily exchange of simultaneous weather observations,, 1873, p. 32. the effective beginning of the World Meteorological Organization..

Myer was instrumental in the development of heliography in the U.S. Army. In 1877, he acquired heliograph instruments from the British Army for experimental purposes and sent them on to General Nelson A. Miles, at the Yellowstone Department in Montana. Miles developed expertise with the heliograph, which he used to great purpose in the Arizona Apache campaigns.Coe, Lewis (1993) The Telegraph: A History of Morse’s Invention and its Predecessors in the United States McFarland, Jefferson, N.C., p. 10, ISBN 0-89950-736-0

Myer headed the Signal Corps from August 21, 1867, until his death of nephritis at Buffalo, New York, in 1880. He is interred in the Walden-Myer Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.

Legacy

Myer is honored by several entities: Fort Whipple, Virginia, was renamed Fort Myer in 1881; U.S. Navy ship (formerly U.S. Army Ship) , an undersea cable-laying vessel built in the 1950s; the Albert J. Myer Center, the Signal Headquarters building of the U.S. Army Communication Electronics Command (CECOM) at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey; and the General Albert J. Myer Forecast Facility at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

Hobart College awarded Myer an honorary LL.D. degree in 1872 and Union College conferred an honorary Ph.D. on him in 1875.

Notes

Early life

Myer was born in Newburgh, New York, son of Henry Beekman Myer and Eleanor McClanahan Myer. The family moved to Western New York and after the death of his mother in 1834, he was raised primarily by his aunt in Buffalo. He worked as a telegrapher before entering Geneva College (now Hobart College) in Geneva, New York, in 1842, at age 13,Cameron, pp. 1380-81. and from where he was graduated in 1847 as a member of The Kappa Alpha Society.Tarleton, p. 106. He received his M.D. degree from Buffalo Medical College in 1851, while working part-time for the New York State Telegraph Company. His doctoral thesis, A New Sign Language for Deaf Mutes, showed concepts that he later used for his invention of aerial telegraphy. Although he inherited a large fortune from his family, he was ambitious and intellectually curious. It was said "that he was specially noted for the manner in which he would take hold of an idea or principle, and, following it to its length and breadth, develop all there was in it or of it."Brown, p. 20.

He engaged in private medical practice in Florida and then sought a commission as a U.S. Army assistant surgeon (lieutenant), entering service September 18, 1854, posted at Fort Duncan, Texas, and Fort Davis, Jeff Davis County, Texas. His major interest of the time, besides medicine, was to devise a system of signaling across long distances, using simple codes and lightweight materials. This system of codes using a single signal flag (or a lantern or kerosene torch at night), known as wig-wag signaling or aerial telegraphy, would be adopted and used by both sides in the Civil War and afterward.Brown, pp. 20-21.