My sister and I were recently reminiscing about the "original" weather channel. I guess it came up in conversation because this is beach season. And it was at the beach - Ocean City, NJ to be precise- that we had our first exposure to round-the-clock weather information.
The weather info came via a series of weather instruments housed in beautifully polished brass cases - like something you might have expected to see on the bridge of a ship. The gauges provided temperature, humidity (it was up to the watcher to figure out the heat index), barometric pressure, wind direction, and wind speed.
All of these gauges, along with a clock, were mounted on a wall. The television camera of a public information station slowly panned from one gauge to the next and back again.
Somehow we found this fascinating, or perhaps more accurately mesmerizing, and we watched the gauges slide by in cycle after cycle as though expecting some previously hidden weather truth would be revealed.
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