Weather or Not
Weather or Not
The first thing I do in the morning is pick up a cellphone and ask Siri for the day’s local weather forecast. Then I push up the shade and look out toward the east. What I do next depends upon both bits of info. Do I dress for an early morning walk on the beach if I’m not due anywhere else? Or do I have breakfast first and forget a walk until later?
What did I used to do? Just looked out the window and relied upon the clock radio to provide a weather forecast at some point. When I got downstairs, looked out the window and at the outdoor thermometer to learn really local conditions.
What did people do in North Hampton back in time? Evidently, something similar to what I used to do but minus the thermometer.
A thermometer that we would recognize as a thermometer did not exist until the early 1700s when, you guessed it, Fahrenheit and Celsius devised two different models. Daniel Fahrenheit invented a thermometer in 1714 that contained mercury rather than the alcohol and water mixtures of earlier efforts. Ten years later, he proposed the temperature scale we all know now. In 1742, Anders Celsius proposed a different scale with zero at the boiling point and 100 degrees at the freezing point of water. It’s now the other way around.
As far as thermometers for our body temperature, doctors here or anywhere, had no practical one until 1866 when one was created that took 5 minutes, not the 20 minutes of earlier types, to provide an accurate body temperature reading.
Until the 1900s, most people in North Hampton would have guessed the temperature by feel and sight – is that rain, sleet, or snow? When water froze would have been an obvious signpost. Storekeeper Samuel A. Dow by his diary entries appears to have been an early adopter of a thermometer. He notes a few hot temperatures in 1878 entries but sticks with “cold”, “very cold” for winter days.
David J. Lamprey who had an ice business noted in his diary entry for January 8, 1891 that “12 above, stacking in for John French, 12 teams, 12 men.” In other words, he was cutting and moving large blocks of ice intended for the John F. French dairy to keep the thousands of gallons of milk that company produced each day cold for their transport to consumers.
For most people, thermometers did not become a personal consumer product until the early 1900s. By the 1920s, just a hundred years ago, thermometers’ use became widespread.
For instance, housewife Alice Smith’s early diaries often state whether it was pleasant weather or rainy or hot or cold but by February 8, 1933, she noted that it was 60 degrees, very warm, and her February 9, 1944 entry that the temperature was minus 2 degrees. What a difference one day and 11 years can make.
Also by the early 20th century American companies produced outdoor thermometers advertising their products – beverage, food, tobacco, automotive, and agricultural goods and equipment. I learned that these thermometers were popular in rural areas because it was always useful to know the temperature and wind direction. As North Hampton was a rural community, it seems likely that both Lafayette Road and Atlantic Avenue businesses might have had their share of such thermometers. Perhaps that explains Dow’s diary recording and the likelihood that Dow’s Store at some point had a large thermometer on its porch.
If anyone has a photo of Dow’s store showing such a thermometer, please contact us and permit us to digitize the image for our collection. Likewise, any photo of Lamprey’s ice pond and operation would be much appreciated.