Introduction - Surface Based Remote Sensing of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer - page 4

measurements. The French professor of physics Jacques Charles (1746-1823) was
the first. He used a hydrogen-filled balloon to reach a height of 2770 m on December
1, 1783. During this flight, he made temperature and pressure observations. Such
balloon flights were resumed more systematically at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury. In 1894, Artur Berson (1859-1942) reached, with the help of inhaled oxygen,
an altitude of 9155 m with a balloon. While the ascents at the end of the eighteenth
century met a general curiosity, Berson's flights were driven by a real scientific
interest in the vertical structure of the atmosphere.
After the inauguration of the meteorological observatory at Lindenberg, east of
Berlin, Germany, in the year 1905, kite measurements were made there on a routine
basis (Fig. 1.1 ). A special winch house, which was turnable in azimuthal direc-
tion, was erected for performing the kite ascents (Fig. 1.2 ). Until 1919, the world
record for kite ascents was pushed up to 9750 m. About 10 years later, German and
Russian meteorologists developed the radiosonde, a small box with basic meteo-
rological instrumentation (temperature, relative humidity, pressure) that was carried
by a balloon up into the stratosphere. Altitudes of 30 km were reached. Radiosondes
Fig. 1.2 Azimuthally
turnable winch house at the
Richard-Aßmann
Observatory of the German
Weather Service in
Lindenberg (east of Berlin),
Germany,builtatthe
beginning of the twentieth
century