[E] Monthly Weather Review, 1915, 32:500. Washington.

The first official coöperation between the Weather Bureau and the War Department aviation school was inaugurated in the year 1914 by Dr. W. J. Humphreys, Professor of Meteorological Physics, when he was detailed to give a course of lectures. It was during this course that he lectured on “Holes in the Air.”[F] This paper has been reprinted as a textbook for the aviation school.

[F] Popular Science Monthly, 1914, 44:18–34, N. Y.

Early Studies in Aëronautics.—Unofficially, however, the coöperation extended back some fifteen years prior to that time, when the writer was in charge of the local office of the Weather Bureau at San Diego, and assisted the aëronautical engineer, Octave Chanute, in his observations and experiments on San Diego Bay.[G] At this time hundreds of photographs of sea-gulls, pelicans, and other soaring birds were made, and both birds and photographs studied and analyzed. Ever since then more or less interest has been taken by the writer in aërial navigation. During an assignment to the Central Office the work of the Wright brothers was observed and studied. The association with the late Octave Chanute and his friends, the Wrights, during their experimental flights at Fort Meyer, Virginia, in September, 1908, is counted among the many pleasant memories of the Washington visit. It was here that was witnessed the first flight with a passenger (see [Fig. 4]), Mr. Orville Wright taking up with him Major (now Colonel) George O. Squier, the present head of the aviation branch of the army. Such was the infancy of the flying-machine that at that date no fatalities had occurred. A few years later the writer had the pleasure of accompanying Mr. Glenn Curtiss while he was determining a site for his school, which was finally located on North Island. (See [Fig. 6].) Shortly afterward, from this place, Harry Harkness made record amateur cross-country flights in an Antoinette monoplane.

[G] “Climate and Weather of San Diego,” Carpenter, 1913, 57–59, San Diego.

Active Work of the Weather Bureau.—During the score of years that the writer has been in charge of the San Diego and Los Angeles stations of the Weather Bureau, interest in flying has been cumulative. Efforts have been made to furnish aviators with available data so that at the present time a day seldom passes without conference With officials or students of Government or private flying schools in this vicinity.

Lectures on Meteorology as Applied to Aviation.—Through the War Department, October, 1915, on request of the commanding officer of the Signal Corps aviation school, at San Diego, the writer was directed by the Chief of the Weather Bureau to deliver two lectures of which the following are outlines:

“What the Weather Bureau Offers the Aviator”

(Illustrated by 37 lantern-slides from photographs by the author)