National Significance

Todd was the first person to arrive on the continent of Australia charged with the responsibility of Meteorological Observer. At Federation, he had served for an unmatched 50 years and was the senior meteorologist in our new country. On his arrival, he identified the importance of the telegraph to the development of modern meteorology.  His work in this area is legendary and enabled the growth of the national observation network. He was the first to arrive in Australia with calibrated instruments, he was one of three colonial meteorologists who developed the national observations and reporting network, and he was the first to speculate about the ENSO effect on Australian weather.

Todd’s Grand Meteorological Scheme

Todd started his working life as an astronomer and as a number of his professional contemporaries, he progressed from looking at the heavens to observing the weather to then forecasting the weather. Like the smart Victorian scientists of his time, Todd’s interests were very wide, but his special gift was his capacity for organisation.  He was able to see the possibilities and pull together the resources to enact grand schemes.  Nothing better illustrates this than his first letter to the editor of the Register soon after arriving in the dusty colony of 17,000 South Australians in 1855. In it, Todd laid out a precise plan for building a continent-wide meteorological network that would rival any other in the world.  From scratch, this required the building of telegraph networks across vast areas that Europeans had not even explored.  He stated the need for precision instruments and their trained observers to be placed where settlements were many hundreds of kilometres distant and technological support was non-existent.  Additionally, his continental system required a high degree of cooperation where governments of the 6 colonies acted like separate countries. Any betting person would have dismissed this 28-year-old as an innocent dreamer, yet 30 years later, Todd’s work in surveying, astronomy, telegraphy, horology, electrical engineering and the post office came together to establish the network, one he dreamed of in his candlelit study soon after arriving in the new colony.  By 1883, at his West Terrace Observatory, Todd and a few staff were drawing synoptic weather charts that we would recognise on our televisions today.  They covered such vast distances, Perth to Auckland, Darwin to Hobart, that they eclipsed the American and European charts of the day.  His meteorological network was in many ways the result of his other endeavours, for without them he would not have had the communication systems and the electrical power to run them, nor the engineering precision of his instruments, nor the precise timing and the trained manpower to make the required observations that enabled the production of synoptic charts and weather forecasts daily.

Todd’s Grand Meteorological Scheme

Todd started his working life as an astronomer and as a number of his professional contemporaries, he progressed from looking at the heavens to observing the weather to then forecasting the weather. Like the smart Victorian scientists of his time, Todd’s interests were very wide, but his special gift was his capacity for organisation.  He was able to see the possibilities and pull together the resources to enact grand schemes.  Nothing better illustrates this than his first letter to the editor of the Register soon after arriving in the dusty colony of 17,000 South Australians in 1855. In it, Todd laid out a precise plan for building a continent-wide meteorological network that would rival any other in the world.  From scratch, this required the building of telegraph networks across vast areas that Europeans had not even explored.  He stated the need for precision instruments and their trained observers to be placed where settlements were many hundreds of kilometres distant and technological support was non-existent.  Additionally, his continental system required a high degree of cooperation where governments of the 6 colonies acted like separate countries. Any betting person would have dismissed this 28-year-old as an innocent dreamer, yet 30 years later, Todd’s work in surveying, astronomy, telegraphy, horology, electrical engineering and the post office came together to establish the network, one he dreamed of in his candlelit study soon after arriving in the new colony.  By 1883, at his West Terrace Observatory, Todd and a few staff were drawing synoptic weather charts that we would recognise on our televisions today.  They covered such vast distances, Perth to Auckland, Darwin to Hobart, that they eclipsed the American and European charts of the day.  His meteorological network was in many ways the result of his other endeavours, for without them he would not have had the communication systems and the electrical power to run them, nor the engineering precision of his instruments, nor the precise timing and the trained manpower to make the required observations that enabled the production of synoptic charts and weather forecasts daily.

19th Century Meteorology – Its Impact

We cannot underestimate the impact meteorology had on the inhabitants of Europe, America and Australia.  Before Todd’s contemporaries, the weather was something that happened locally and seasonally.  As a settler, the experience of rain may have stretched as far as a horse ride away, say 100 kilometres.  Beyond that, the news did not travel fast and shared weather shared with the country and inter-colonial citizens were not considered.  Also, the weather was a seasonal event, with rain a winter experience and dry a summer certainty in South Australia.  What happened in another colony was of little practical consequence and only dimly realised. However, this localised world was challenged by the geographic breadth of Todd’s synoptic maps.  They would have been beyond the comprehension of the mid-nineteenth century residents of the seven colonies.  The distance from Perth to Auckland on Todd’s maps is 5335 kilometres, not much less than London to Kabul in Afghanistan, an incomprehensible distance to citizens of Europe and their colonial cousins, a population bound by horse and cart and the occasional train ride.  But the audacity of the distance shown in these maps was amplified as they were overlayed daily by weather data drawn from the time-synchronised observations of dozens of observers made possible by the new telegraph systems.  Both space and time dimensions of the weather systems were revolutionary in mid-Victorian times.  Today, we can see this revolution unfold in the daily weather maps drawn by Todd and his staff from 1878 to 1909. Weather systems affecting Perth on Monday could be in Adelaide by Wednesday and Melbourne the next day.  The rapidity of change and the vast distances covered were laid bare by modern meteorology as Todd’s synoptic charts were posted daily for public consumption. In its own way, these consecutive charts showed how integrated the separate colonies of southern Australia were.