OCTOBER 2007 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | 1525 OCTOBER 2007 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | 1525 T he Harry Wexler Pa- pers in the Library of Congress contain a copy of Aviation Week for 3 February 1958 with a black-and-white image on the cover depicting how the Earth and its weather systems might appear as transmitted by television from a satellite vehicle. I had seen the magazine in the library of the National Air and Space Museum and had also found black-and- white glossy prints of the image many times in various collections—in one case, with the in- triguing caption, “taken from an original color image.” I had looked for the color image, to no avail, in the National Archives, NOAA Cen- tral Library, and elsewhere. Tinking I would simply return the magazine to its archival box, a color photo- graph fell out of the front of the magazine. I whooped for joy. Librarians and patrons looked askance. Here it was (Fig. 1), a photograph of the color painting Wexler had commissioned in 1954. Wexler used the black-and-white version of the image in his lectures in 1954 at the Hayden Plan- etarium symposium on space travel, and in 1956 at the honors-night dinner talk before the American Astronautical Society. Encouraged by the novelist and futurist Arthur C. Clarke, Wexler published versions of his remarks in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (vol. 13, pp. 269–276) and in the Journal of Astronautics (vol. 4, pp. 1–6). In his lectures he made a strong claim for the utility of the meteorological satellite, not only as a “storm patrol,” but also as a potentially revolutionary new tool with global capabilities (Wexler 1956; Logsdon 1998). Since the satellite will be the frst vehicle contrived by man that will be entirely out of the infuence of weather, it may at frst glance appear rather startling that this same vehicle will introduce a revolution- ary chapter in meteorological science—not only by improving global weather observing and forecast- AFFILIATION: FLEMING—Science, Technology and Society Pro- gram, Colby College, Waterville, Maine CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: James Fleming, Science, Technol- ogy and Society Program, Colby College, 5881 Mayflower Hill, Waterville, ME 04901 E-mail: jfleming@colby.edu DOI:10.1175/BAMS-88-10-1525 ©2007 American Meteorological Society A 1954 COLOR PAINTING OF WEATHER SYSTEMS AS VIEWED FROM A FUTURE SATELLITE BY JAMES FLEMING FIG. 1. Weather systems over North America as they might appear from a satellite 4,000 miles above Amarillo, Texas, on June 21. The paint- ing was commissioned by Dr. Harry Wexler, director of meteorological research, U.S. Weather Bureau. Sur- face features are drawn tak- ing into account Earth’s normal colors, reflectiv- ity of sunlight, and scatter- ing and depleting effects of light passing through the atmosphere, with calculated brightness of various cloud types. Weather features include a family of three cyclonic storms extending southwest from Hudson Bay to Texas; a similar system over the Bay of Alaska; small hurricane developing near Puerto Rico; meeting zone of northeast and southeast trade winds, extending west of the Isthmus of Panama to mid-Pacific; line squall in the eastern U.S.; scattered cumulus clouds over heated land areas; lenticular clouds usually found where the jet stream crosses mountains, as over the northern Canadian Rockies; and low stratus and fog off the California coast, over the Great Lakes, and in the Newfoundland area. (SOURCE: Harry Wexler Papers, Library of Congress) ARTIFACTS