Memories of the Bureau of Meteorology
Preface
Memories of the Bureau of Meteorology 1929–1946 by Allan Cornish
Foreword
Chapter 1: My Early Days in the Bureau
Chapter 2: Some New Vistas
Chapter 3: The RAAF Measures Upper Air Temperatures
Chapter 4: The Bureau Begins to Grow
Chapter 5: My Voyage in Discovery II
Chapter 6: The Birth of the Instrument Section
Chapter 7: Darwin Days
Chapter 8: I Leave the Bureau
History of Major Meteorological Installation in Australia from 1945 to 1981 by Reg Stout
Four Years in the RAAF Meteorological Service by Keith Swan
The Bureau of Meteorology in Papua New Guinea in the 1950s by Col Glendinning
Index
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Chapter 5: My Voyage in Discovery II (continued)
We had no gyro-compass and wireless reception was intermittent. The only accurate timepiece was a chronometer. When Number one saw a significant feature he would indicate the two points between which he wished the subtended angle measured. We would look at the sketch to check we knew which points on which measurements were to be made. Number one would indicate he was ready to take a subtended bearing. I would be ready with the range-finder on one of these points and when he said 'stop' the person with the chronometer would record the time. A 'booker' recorded the various readings.Subtended angles were measured with sextants on their sides. Sextants were also used to measure vertical angles from which heights of features could be calculated. The large 12-foot range-finder gave distance of features from the ship. The reference point for all these calculations was the ship of which the position was obtained by sunshots and the log.
The skipper's job was to produce an accurate record of the ship's position at the times recorded by the chronometer. The survey took about a fortnight. Our courses criss-crossed the area in which the islands lay and there were many observations on the same points.
We were occupied for the next three or four weeks in using all these data to produce a map of each island. We also had a measure of the topography of the sea bed in the area traversed by the ship. All this information went back to Admiralty.
Important in the program of Discovery II were the observations of the zone of ocean convergence which produces a discontinuity in ocean temperature and salinity, salinity and temperature being higher north of the convergence. Observations of ocean temperature and salinity were made routinely throughout the entire voyage and gave a clear indication of the ocean convergence.
People in Bright Sparcs - Cornish, Allan William
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© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
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