Who invented the weather forecast symbol?

In the early 1970s, mark allen, a student of Norich Art Institute, watched the weather forecast of the BBC every afternoon. At that time, the TV host fiddled with the symbols with magnets on the metal map: dots represent rain, asterisks represent snow, and lines are used to mark areas with equal air pressure. "People will find these symbols difficult to understand."

1974, Allen's graduation project makes the weather symbols more intuitive. He mentioned a set of small icons by otl aicher Asher, who designed a series of simple and bold characters for the 1972 Olympic Games. Finally, Allen drew a fluffy cloud in a similar style and added some simple symbols at the bottom: raindrops, lightning and sunshine. "The main carrier is the cloud, and then other things are attached to it," he said. 1975, the BBC bought the right to use the symbol Allen for 200 pounds and a very small share. The symbols he painted have been on TV for 30 years.

They are not the first group of weather symbols, nor the last group, but they are probably the most concise and beautiful group. For decades, meteorological maps have been filled with various technical symbols. 19 10, the US Meteorological Administration released the first commercial weather map, in which the distribution of clouds is represented by hollow and solid circles, and the wind is represented by small arrows. 19 12 years, these maps were reprinted in 100 cities. In 1930s, major news agencies competed with each other. Mark Monmonier, a historian and geographer at Syracuse University, said that they published weather maps one after another, so the symbols used were no longer so vague, and they began to use simpler and more attractive icon designs.

Facing the camera, weather announcers often draw sketches on weather maps with crayons or markers. In 1970s, when Allen's weather symbols were adopted by BBC, American TV stations began to use their own magnetic weather symbols. In the 1980s, the emergence of computer graphics brought more standardized and low-resolution weather symbols: "Only 65,438+06 colors can be colored," said nilsson mikael, a meteorologist in Denver, who works for the Color Map Meteorological System Company, "so you can't be too creative."

By the end of 1980s, the computer system had made great progress, and TV stations could choose their own customized weather symbols. When weather forecast appears on the Internet and mobile applications, these symbols become more personalized. Around 2000, a government meteorologist named Kane Dennis Kane Texas made a set of symbols with photos-rainy streets, cyclones, fog lights-which became the standard symbols of weather.gov's website.

Like other weather symbols, Kane's symbol has many fans. When the National Weather Service announced that this group of photo symbols might be replaced by more traditional symbols, it received 18000 comments within one day, most of which expressed anger. In 2005, the BBC faced the same anger when it changed the logo of Allen. Meteorological symbols "will soon cause controversy," said Robert Bonger, then director of the National Weather Service. "The controversy is fierce enough to bury you."