SCIENCE and religion mixed easily for Thomas Romney Robinson. In 1821 he forsook the groves of academy in Dublin, and in due course, assumed the simultaneous, duties of director of Armagh Observatory and rector of the parish of Carrickmacross in Co Monaghan both of which offices he held for nearly 60 years until his death in 1882.
While astronomy was his forte, and the care of the souls of Carrickmacross, no doubt his true vocation, meteorology was Thomas Romney Robinson's lifelong passion. He is remembered as the inventor of the anemometer that bears his name.
Robinson was born on this day 204 years ago, on April 23rd, 1792. As a very bright student of his time, he became a Fellow of Trinity College at the age of 22, and for the next seven years pursued an academic career as professor of natural philosophy at that university.
But it was long after he had moved north that he unveiled to the world the Robinson rotating cup anemometer the now familiar whirling instrument for measuring the speed of wind.
The idea of a horizontally mounted cross whirling in the breeze was not particularly new. Some of the earliest windmills were of this design, and the device was used for many purposes. Travellers to 17th century Tibet, for example, credits use to drive a small rotating cyclinder, in ascribed on which were readings from the sacred text in this way the chore of offering perpetual prayers to God was conveniently automated.
But it was Robinson who first hit upon the idea of using the arrangement to measure the speed at which the wind was blowing. In 1846 he completed his first working model, which was identical for all practical purposes to the instrument we know today, with a hollow hemispherical "cup" mounted at the end of each of four horizontal arms.
The difficult part, however, was to deduce a precise relationship between the speed of rotation of the cups and the velocity of the wind in miles per hour.
Robinson calculated that the hemispheres should move at the speed of the wind, but this proved to be an underestimation. In the end, he found that the most accurate method of calibration was by the somewhat perilous expedient of mounting the instrument on a horse and carriage which was then driven at a constant speed between two points a known distance apart on a calm day.
In this way the speed of the carriage could be estimated, and after a series of such runs, the reaction of the instrument to winds of various strengths could be accurately gauged.