Abbe, Cleveland

1838 - Born on the 3rd of December in New York City.

        - He grew up in a prosperous merchant family in New York City.

1857 - He excelled in mathematics and chemistry, and graduated from the Free Academy.
    
       - He then taught engineering for two years at the University of Michigan  while at the same time

            studying astronomy under Franz Brunnow at the University.

1868 - He was hired by the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, however, the organization lacked funding and

               Abbe lost his job less than a year later.

1870 - He  established the U.S. Weather Bureau  and inaugurated the use of daily weather forecasts.

          - In recognition of his work, he was often known as Old Probability for the reliability of his forecasts

                and was appointed the first head of the new service.

1871 - He personally gave the first official weather report and he continued to forecast alone for the next

                six months, while simultaneously training others.
       
        - He was joined by two army lieutenants and a civilian professor in giving reports, and the team was

              then able to rotate the heavy workload.

      
1872 - He regularly sent over five hundred sets of daily maps and bulletins overseas in exchange for

              European meteorological data.

1883 - He convinced North American railroad companies to adopt his time zone system.

1884 - He recognized that predicting the weather required a widespread, yet coordinated, team.

           - He enlisted twenty volunteer weather observers to help report conditions.

          - He selected data-collecting instruments that would be critical to the success of weather predicting,

               and trained Army observer sergeants in their use.

1912 - The Royal Meteorogical Society presented him with the Symons Memorial Gold Medal, citing his

                contribution “to instrumental, statistical, dynamical, and thermo dynamical meteorology

                and forecasting.

1916 - He died on the 29th of December in Chevy Chase, Maryland, after a lifetime of outstanding

              scientific achievement.