IGY Bulletin, Number 7, January 1958 - Microcard program for IGY meteorological data

This article was a report by D.A. Davies, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.

As a specialized agency of the United Nations, WMO is dedicated to international cooperation and coordination on the state and behaviour of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the land and oceans, the weather and climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources (WMO).

The WMO was established in 1950. Its interests were quite related to some of the goals of the IGY. The WMO Bulletin, volume 58. #1 2009, recalled its statement about the IGY from 50 years previously:

At the close of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), we would like to express, on behalf of the World Meteorological Organization, thanks and appreciation to all meteorological services of the world for their whole-hearted collaboration in this vast project, which provides yet another demonstration of the international spirit for which meteorologists have long been renowned. A special tribute must be paid to the thousands of meteorological observers throughout the world upon whom the IGY imposed many additional duties. We are confident that the same enthusiastic support will continue until the last of the forms containing the meteorological observations has been received at the WMO Secretariat, thus completing the collection of data which constitutes a unique contribution to future developments in the science of meteorology.

Signed:
A. Viaut, President
D.A. Davies, Secretary-General

Anyway, the Bulletin article goes on to say that the IGY Meteorological Data Centre, located within the WMO, was to publish the essential meteorological data collected during the IGY on "microcards," sensitized 3x5 inch cards on which printed matter was reproduced photographically in greatly reduced form. A special microcard reader could project an enlarged image so that the data could be read.

Microcards were an opaque positive microform, designed by Fremont Rider, librarian at Wesleyan University, in the early 1940s. He designed the microcard to serve as both a catalog card (front of card) and storage medium (reverse, containing up to 250 pages worth of microtext),in order to save shelf space in rapidly growing library collections. Microfiche appeared in the 1960s and supplanted microcards as the standard flat sheet microform (Jamison, 1988).

There were to be four types of IGY microcards recording different types of weather-related data:

1. Surface observations made on land
2. Surface observations made at sea
3. Radiosonde and rawinsonde observations (see previous post)
4. Upper wind observations

The Bulletin article estimated that about 18,500 microcards would be required to hold the essential meteorological observations of the IGY. A subscription price of $5,900 was established for a compete set of microcards. Today that would be equivalent to an inflation-adjusted $60,000.

Data storage has changed just a bit (pun intended) since the time of the IGY!