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On 11 January 2014, BBC Weather celebrates the 60th anniversary of its first ever TV forecast. George Cowling, a 32-year-old Met Office forecaster, became the first TV weatherman to present the five-minute live broadcast on 11 January 1954 from the BBC studios in Lime Grove.
Assisted by a great deal of experience and scientific understanding, his main tools were pencils and a rubber for analysing the weather charts, and a pair of dividers for measuring isobar spacing to give wind speeds. Prior to this, weather charts had been presented on screen with captions.
The tradition of live forecasts is as popular as ever today and, in parallel with the improvements to forecast data accuracy, the equipment and technology used by BBC weather presenters has also changed enormously. While receipt of charts via a large fax machine was one of the first technological developments, today, weather data arrives on the forecasters’ computer desktops directly from the Met Office Operations Centre in Exeter. And a far cry from felt pens and Perspex screens employed in the early days, data is today processed by a state-of-the-art graphics system which uses virtual reality technology to present the latest weather information and create the sleek graphics seen across our screens.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latest ... anniv.html
