Absent Balloons?: How a Global Germany Contributed to a European Physics of the Atmosphere

Abstract

In the global history of contemporary meteorological infrastructure, the focus is often on either Cold War computers and satellites or nineteenth-century international organizations (Edwards 2010)Footnote1. I would like to propose another vital infrastructural project on which the later existence of American and Soviet satellites and computers depended: structural weather balloon campaigns, organized mainly on the European mainland between 1890 and 1933. Three recent monographs can help us create a new agenda for a history of the German-speaking world as a key site for the sudden emergence of new meteorological infrastructure