1735 Trade winds

Trade winds

• George Hadley, the meteorologist
• of the Royal Society in London,
• became dissatisfied with Edmond Halley’s
• explanation for trade winds,
• particularly that differences in sunshine
• from morning to evening
• cause the easterly trade winds.
• Hadley’s paper, “Concerning the cause
• of the general trade winds,”
• describes how heat at the equator
• and a lack of heat at the poles
• causes air to rise to a high altitude
• and move toward the poles
• where it falls as it cools
• and returns near the surface
• moving toward the equator,
• and describes how the doldrums exist
• where northern and southern winds meet.
• Furthermore, Hadley was the first to realize
• that the rotation of the earth
• causes the easterlies.
• Points on a sphere farther from the equator
• rotate slower than those closer,
• so that air moving toward the equator
• will move against the earth’s rotation.
• Even though Hadley’s theory
• is too simple to explain
• the winds that blow
• and the airs that lie still,
• Hadley gathered evidence of the pattern
• and tried to model it
• according to physical principles.

Means

• Christopher Columbus
• discovered the trade winds.
• although he is known more
• for what he discovered
• than for his means of discovery.

Lost science

• A discovery can benefit no one unless put to use;
• it must be shared, taught, and adopted.
• It took fifty years for George Hadley’s paper
• to be rediscovered by John Dalton.
• Georg Ohm discovered Olm’s law
• forty-six years after Henry Cavendish discovered it,
• which James Clerk Maxwell discovered
• another fifty-two years after Ohm.
• I invented a means
• of harvesting energy
• from ambient electromagnetic waves
• and told only a few friends
• years before others showed it could be done.
• I and
• maybe many others.