When the Whitby Museum of Literature and Philosophy took over the top floor of the Pierce Road building in the middle of the 19th century, George Merriweather, M. D., was named its curator emeritus. Merriweather was known as an unusual person - he invented very strange devices: for example, the "Platinum Lamp", which can be refueled once every two weeks (with a special mixture of alcohol and whiskey) and used continuously, while the operating cost was only one penny for eight hours of work.
Since Merriweather was a physician by training, he had in his doctoral arsenal of then widely used medicinal leeches. It was the observation of them that led to the manufacture of one extremely strange and wonderful device - the "Atmospheric Electromagnetic Telegraph, Powered by Animal Instinct", or as the inventor called it more often - "Tempest prognosticator".
A copy of the Fortuneteller and original photograph.
Noticing the special sensitivity of medicinal leeches to changes in the atmosphere (George believed that atmospheric electromagnetism was "to blame" for all this), Merriweather constructed a device based on his observations, consisting of a dozen pint transparent bottles filled with rainwater per inch, each of which was placed by a leech. Pieces of whalebone were fixed in the necks, which were connected with the hammers fixed on top of the device with the help of wires and chains.
The scheme of the device.
When the storm approached, then, feeling it, each beer tried to get out of the water and touched the whalebone, thereby causing the hammer to strike the bell. The more often and stronger the bell sounded, the more accurate the prediction of the storm was considered. When the leech finished “its work”, it fell into the water, and the hammer returned to its place. Information about twenty-eight accurate predictions has been preserved.
Bottles for living fortunetellers.
The device was shown to the public in 1851 at the Great Exhibition in London. Thereafter, Merriweather proposed six designs of such devices, simple ones for use on ships, more elaborate and expensive for living rooms and palace halls. The projects did not take root: they began to use stormglasses in the navy, and nothing is known about the fate of the “home” “Foretellers”.
Promotional video:
Nevertheless, the merits of George Merryweather, as one of the first meteorologists, were noted and a copy of his device, made a hundred years after the first display, in 1951, is exhibited at the Museum in Whitby. A full sized working copy is also available in Devon, at the Museum of Meteorology.
