On 09 February 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the Secretary of War to establish a national weather service.
Later that year, the first systematized, synchronous weather observations ever taken in the U.S. were made by “observing-sergeants” of the Army Signal Service at 22 stations and telegraphed to Washington.
Cleveland Abbe began issuing weather reports or bulletins since 01 September 1869. He became chief meteorologist on 03 January 1871 and is known as the “father of the U.S. Weather Bureau.”
On 19 February 1871, Abbe gave the first official weather report.
He divided the United States into four time zones to standardize time across weather reporting stations. It would be 18 November 1883 before United States and Canadian railroads instituted standard time. It would be 1918 before the Standard Time Act (Calder Act, 15 USC 260) became the law of the land.
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