Albert James Myer (September 20, 1828 – August 24, 1880) was a surgeon and United States Army general. He is known as the father of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, as its first chief signal officer just prior to the American Civil War, the inventor of wigwag signaling, and also as the father of the U.S. Weather Bureau.
Early life
Myer was born in Newburgh, New York, son of Henry Beekman Myer and Eleanor McClanahan Myer. The family moved to Western New York and after the death of his mother in 1834, he was raised primarily by his aunt in Buffalo.
Myer worked as a telegrapher before entering Geneva College (now Hobart College) in Geneva, New York, in 1842, at age 13, and from where he was graduated in 1847 as a member of The Kappa Alpha Society. He received his M.D. degree from Buffalo Medical College in 1851, while working part-time for the New York State Telegraph Company. His doctoral thesis, A New Sign Language for Deaf Mutes, showed concepts that he later used for his invention of aerial telegraphy.
He was ambitious and intellectually curious. It was said "that he was specially noted for the manner in which he would take hold of an idea or principle, and, following it to its length and breadth, develop all there was in it or of it." He inherited a large fortune from his family.
He engaged in private medical practice in Florida and then sought a commission as a U.S. Army assistant surgeon (lieutenant), entering service September 18, 1854, posted at Fort Duncan, Texas, and Fort Davis, Jeff Davis County, Texas.
In 1858, the Army expressed interest in Myer's invention and appointed a board to examine "the principles and plans of the signaling, mode of use in the field, and course to be pursued in introducing to the army." Myer appeared before the board, chaired by Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee, in 1859, and convinced them to authorize field testing of his invention. He conducted field tests starting in April of that year around New York Harbor. The tests were successful, and Secretary of War John B. Floyd recommended to Congress that the Army adopt Myer's system and that Myer be appointed as chief signal officer. Congress approved Myer's appointment as major and chief signal officer, and the Signal Corps was formed, despite opposition in the Senate by Jefferson Davis from Mississippi. Myer was sent to the Department of New Mexico for further field trials with the assistance of Samuel T. Cushing of his system in a campaign against the Navajos.
On August 24, 1857, he married Catherine Walden, daughter of a prominent Buffalo attorney, with whom he would have six children.
Ironically, the first use in combat of Myer's signaling system was by Confederate Captain Edward Porter Alexander at the First Battle of Bull Run. Alexander had been a subordinate of Myer's and assisted in the New York field trials.
In addition to his aerial signaling, Myer recognized the need for electrical telegraphy in field communications. He introduced a field telegraph train of wagons to support a device called the Beardslee telegraph, which used a dial instead of a key tapping Morse code, developed to require less training for its operators.
Myer's Signal Corps was actually a separate entity from the Military Telegraph Service, a War Department bureau staffed primarily by civilian telegraph operators. He had numerous organizational disputes with the Assistant Secretary of War over this function, attempting on several occasions to take control of all telegraphic operations. When he proposed to remove the less than dependable Beardslee device and recruit trained telegraphers into the Signal Corps, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton removed him from his post as chief signal officer He served as signal officer for the Department of the Gulf from August 1864 to 1865. Myer received the brevet grade in honor of his formation of the Signal Corps.
Postbellum career
left|thumb|296x296px|Albert J. Myer Memorial erected in 1931 for 50th anniversary of the 1881 renaming of Fort Myer at Whipple Field
The U.S. Congress, on February 9, 1870, authorized "... meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the states and territories of the United States, and for giving notice on the northern lakes and seaboard by telegraph and signals of the approach and force of storms". This duty, previously conducted by the Smithsonian Institution, was assigned to General Myer's Signal Corps, due in part to his previous interests in storm telegraphy. It was the birth of the U.S. Weather Bureau, now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1873 at the International Meteorological Congress of Vienna, he proposed a resolution for the establishment throughout the world of weather stations and daily exchange of simultaneous weather observations, the effective beginning of the World Meteorological Organization.
Myer was instrumental in the development of heliography in the U.S. Army. In 1877, he acquired heliograph instruments from the British Army for experimental purposes and sent them on to General Nelson A. Miles, at the Yellowstone Department in Montana. Miles developed expertise with the heliograph, which he used to great purpose in the Arizona Apache campaigns.
thumb|Myer's International Weather Chart (October 1877)
Myer headed the Signal Corps from August 21, 1867, until his death of nephritis