Anemometer

An anemometer is a device used for measuring wind speed, and is also a common weather station instrument. The term is derived from the Greek word anemos, which means wind, and is used to describe any wind speed instrument used in meteorology. The first known description of an anemometer was given by Leon Battista Alberti in 1450. The anemometer has changed little since its development in the 15th century. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) is said to have invented the first mechanical anemometer around 1450. In following centuries, numerous others, including Robert Hooke(1635–1703), developed their own versions, with some being mistakenly credited as the inventor. In 1846, John Thomas Romney Robinson (1792–1882) improved upon the design by using four hemispherical cups and mechanical wheels. In 1926, Canadian meteorologist John Patterson (January 3, 1872 – February 22, 1956) developed a three-cup anemometer, which was improved by Brevoort and Joiner in 1935. In 1991, Derek Weston added the ability to measure wind direction. In 1994, Andrews Pflitsch developed the sonic anemometer. A simple type of anemometer was invented in 1845 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson, of Armagh Observatory. It consisted of four hemispherical cups mounted on horizontal arms, which were mounted on a vertical shaft. The air flow past the cups in any horizontal direction turned the shaft at a rate that was roughly proportional to the wind speed. Therefore, counting the turns of the shaft over a set time interval produced a value proportional to the average wind speed for a wide range of speeds. It is also called a rotational anemometer. On an anemometer with four cups, it is easy to see that since the cups are arranged symmetrically on the end of the arms, the wind always has the hollow of one cup presented to it and is blowing on the back of the cup on the opposite end of the cross. Since a hollow hemisphere has a drag coefficient of .38 on the spherical side and 1.42 on the hollow side, more force is generated on the cup that is presenting its hollow side to the wind. Because of this asymmetrical force, torque is generated on the axis of the anemometer, causing it to spin. Theoretically, the speed of rotation of the anemometer should be proportional to the wind speed, because the force produced on an object is proportional to the speed of the fluid flowing past it, but other factors influence the rotational speed, including turbulence produced by the apparatus, increasing drag in opposition to the torque that is produced by the cups and support arms, and friction of the mount point. When Robinson first designed his anemometer, he asserted that the cups moved one-third of the speed of the wind, unaffected by the cup size or arm length. This was apparently confirmed by some early independent experiments, but it was incorrect. Instead, the ratio of the speed of the wind and that of the cups, the anemometer factor, depends on the dimensions of the cups and arms, and may have a value between two and a little over three. Every previous experiment involving an anemometer had to be repeated after the error was discovered. The three-cup anemometer developed by the Canadian John Patterson in 1926 and subsequent cup improvements by Brevoort & Joiner of the United States in 1935 led to a cupwheel design with a nearly linear response and had an error of less than 3% up to 60 mph (97 km/h). Patterson found that each cup produced maximum torque when it was at 45° to the wind flow. The three-cup anemometer also had a more constant torque and responded more quickly to gusts than the four-cup anemometer.