Of current interest: Free-floating automatic weather station reports data by radio

A free-floating buoy-type weather station, developed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) for the Navy Bureau of Ships during World War II, reports weather data by radio automatically and unattended. The NBS buoy automatic weather station consists essentially of a timing mechanism, several weather-responsive devices, a relaxation or keying oscillator, and a simple 2-stage radio transmitter. The weather-responsive devices cause associated resistors to vary with changes in weather conditions. At 3-hour intervals the timing mechanism, a modified automobile-type electric clock, turns the station on. While a program selector switch inserts one weather resistor after another into the keying oscillator circuit in predetermined sequence, a relay in the plate circuit of the keying oscillator switches the transmitter on and off at a rate proportional to the value of the particular resistor.