Blue Hill Observatory

The Blue Hill Observatory (BHO) will digitize 120 record books of the continuous history of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, a National Historic Landmark that played a pivotal role in the development of meteorology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These handwritten observational data, one of the oldest continuous climate monitoring systems in the United States, have been recorded in bound journals since 1885 and are an integral part of the BHO’s history, mission, and infrastructure. Digitization will preserve these volumes as well as allow easier access to this data, which is related to instrumentation, daily weather conditions, atmospheric sounding efforts, and contemporary historic events. A regional conservation center will undertake digitization and conservation work in tandem, creating faithful digital surrogates while also constructing archival storage for each volume.