" Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry" by Scott Huler (Author) ISBN-10: 1400048850 | ISBN-13: 978-1400048854

A review by By mrliteral.

As a child, I owned a book about storms. I don't recall much of the specifics, but I do remember a table categorizing the different wind forces. Though I didn't really think much of it at the time, this was the Beaufort Scale, which creates 13 categories for wind, from 0 - Calm to 12 - Hurricane. Each force is defined by not only a wind speed but also a description; for example, Calm is described as "calm; smoke rises vertically." For Scott Huler, the Beaufort Scale is the best piece of descriptive writing ever, a blend of science and poetry; his adoration of the Scale resulted in Defining the Wind.

Defining the Wind is an ode to and a history of the Beaufort Scale. Of course, one of the principal parts of this history would be Beaufort himself, and Huler's biography of this British admiral is one component of the book. Francis Beaufort did a lot of wonderful hydrographic and cartographic work for the British navy in the first part of the nineteenth century. His role in developing the Beaufort Scale, however, was only partial.

Huler gives us the history of the Scale. Beaufort was not the first to develop such a scale, but he did implement the zero-to-twelve system and came up with descriptions that focused more on the sea than the land. The actual wording of the modern Beaufort Scale - which can be found in most full-sized dictionaries - was created a half-century after Beaufort's death. Even the attachment of his name to the Scale was done after he died, so it isn't like he really tried to steal the idea for his own glory; he merely improved on existing scales for the benefit of the Navy (and science).

The big lesson in the book is the importance of description in scales. Most people like to break things down into an organized fashion. We love lists - the top ten songs or the top 100 movies - and we enjoy scales. Even the Amazon reviewing system employs a scale - from one to five stars - and we often use the scale to make judgments about what to buy (or see or eat). But the Amazon scale is truly subjective: what three stars means varies from person to person.

What the Beaufort scale does is not only provide a quantitative value for a certain type of wind (for example, a gentle breeze is 8-12 miles per hour), but also a qualitative one ("leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends a light flag"). The difference between a gentle and light breeze is not only no longer subjective, it can also be seen by those who don't have an anemometer

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www.amazon.com/Defining-Wind-Beaufort-19th-Century-Admiral/d...

is the amazon link to the book.

SKIM- Yeah! the "howtoons" are great, I have that one up in my office!

Try this one