Jefferson's Weather Data
In an article at Smithsonian Magazine, historian Sara Georgini discusses Thomas Jefferson’s near-obsession with tracking the weather, and points us to a new digital project, the Jefferson Weather & Climate Records that provides us access to his observations.
Between July 1776 and June 1826, Jefferson recorded conditions in 19,000 observations across nearly 100 locations. All of this data is now available in a special digital edition of his climate and weather records, thanks to the Papers of Thomas Jefferson project and the Center for Digital Editing at the University of Virginia.
I found Georgini’s description of TJ’s notetaking method fascinating:
Armed with a pencil and his reusable ivory notebook—wiped clean weekly as he transferred data, spreadsheet-style, to his papers—Jefferson struggled to make useful links between climate and geography.
So he made observations (on ivory!) that were then compiled in “ledger books, memorandum books, almanac sheets or loose folios.” And Georgini’s right: the resulting “data” looks a lot like a modern spreadsheet. Take a look at these examples.
The project as a whole looks really interesting with a lot of great documents in which you might easily get lost, with transcriptions, too.
But in addition to the documents themselves, the project team has built some interactive data visualizations using Jefferson’s observations as a dataset, such as this visualization of his observations of birds.
Georgini’s article also points out that others in Jefferson’s network were similarly engaged in citizen science. James Madison’s weather diaries have already been digitized via the American Philosophical Society as part of a larger Historic Meteorological Records project.
Neat.
Key Links
Articles
- Sara Georgini, “Discover Why Thomas Jefferson Meticulously Monitored the Weather Wherever He Went.” @ Smithsonian Magazine
Digital History/DH Projects
American Philosophical Society - Historic Meteorological Records.