Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

CURTAILMENT BY LIMITATION OF FUNDS 353
At the request pf the U.S. Weather Bureau, Leon Curtiss and Allen V.
Astin of the electrical division undertook similar research at the Bureau, to
devise a practical system of radiometeorography for the weather service.'57
When the aerological division of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics requested
a high-altitude weather recording system of its own, a second project was
initiated in the radio laboratory under Diamond, Hinman, and Dunmore.
As the Diamond apparatus seemed better suited to both Weather
Bureau and Navy needs, Curtiss and Astin, more interested in radiation
phenomena than in weather, equipped the radio telemeter they devised with
special Geiger counters and began lofting them 20 miles and more into the
stratosphere to gather cosmic-ray data.'58 Cosmic rays, the source of high
energy particles that impinge on the earth from space, are of interest not
only as radiation phenomena but for their effect on radio communication
and also as possible keys to the study of atomic structure. The 18 ascensions
made with the Curtiss-Astin telemeter confirmed earlier views reported from
abroad, that the greater part of cosmic-ray phenomena was apparently caused
by secondary effects generated not in outer space but within our owii
atmosphere.159
A year after beginning construction of their unit, Diamond and
his group sent up their first model and demonstrated its effectiveness in
cransmitting continuous data on cloud height and thickness, temperature,
pressure, humidity, and light intensity in the upper atmosphere. Effective
from ground level to heights of 15 or more miles and at distances up to 200
miles, the radiosonde, as it was called, enormously increased the range and
quantity of weather data, previously gathered by observing devices strapped
to kites, zeppelins, or the wings of airplanes. By 1940 the radiosonde had
become an integral part of U.S. weather and meteorological services and some
35,000 units were being built and sent up each year in this country and its
territories.'60
" Curtiss and Astin, J. Aeron. Sci. 3, 35 (1935).
'581n 1928, with the recent incorporation of the vacuum tube in the Geiger-Muller ion
counter (the principle had been established by Rutherford and Geiger in 1908), Dr. Cur-
tiss began a long series of studies on routine quantitative measurements with the counter
which led to the later cosmic-ray studies and development of new types of counters. See
RP165 (1930), RP191 (1930), RP509 (1932), RP526 (1933), RP1154 (1938), RP1525
(1943).
"° RP1169, "An improved radio meteorograph on the Olland principle" (Curtiss, Astin,
et aL, 1938); Curtiss and Astin, "Cosmic ray observations in the stratosphere," Phys.
Rev. 53, 23 (1938); RP1254, "Cosmic-ray observations * * (Curtiss, Astin, et al.,
1939).
100 NBS Annual Report 1936, p. 65; Annual Report 1937, p. 60; RP1082 "A method for
investigation of upper air phenomena * * (Diamond, Hinman, and Dunmore, 1937)