History of Increase Lapham, known as ‘Wisconsin’s first scientist’

DELAFIELD, Wis. (CBS 58) — Have you ever hiked Lapham Peak in Delafield? Or maybe you took a class at UW-Milwaukee’s Lapham Hall? Or maybe you know someone who lives in Lapham Park Senior Housing? Or maybe you have driven down Milwaukee’s Lapham Boulevard? But have you ever wondered who Lapham really was?

Increase Lapham (Yes, “Increase” was his first name), is known as Wisconsin’s first scientist. Paul Hayes, Author of a book about Lapham called “Studying Wisconsin: The Life of Increase Lapham” says Lapham was, “A wonderful all around citizen scientist.”

He was a map maker, a weatherman, a botanist, a geologist. Someone who dabbled in every science in a time when scientists studied everything and did not have specialties like they do today. He arrived in Milwaukee in 1836 and had the entire state as his laboratory.

As part of his interest in all sciences he began to observe and study weather. He had a weather station on the banks of the Milwaukee River where he measured tides, temperatures, winds and kept records. In fact, Milwaukee’s weather records likely stretch back to Lapham himself. He discovered that through studying weather observations from around the country they could attempt to predict what weather would happen in one location based on what happened to the west.

He began to band together with other like-minded individuals around the country to lobby for a national storm warning system. Lapham’s focus was on the surprise storms that came quickly across the Great Lakes and the terrible toll they were taking on the ships, sailors and cargo.

In 1869 a bill passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Grant. It was first part of the U.S. Army’s Signal Corp and then became the Storm Warning System. Eventually it was called the National Weather Bureau and finally what we know today – the National Weather Service.

Lapham was put in charge of the first office in Chicago of what is now the National Weather Service. On the first day he arrived at the office he wrote the first official forecast in the United States calling for high winds across the Great Lakes. The forecast was accurate, and the rest was history.

“Increase Lapham would be the forefather of the agency. He was one of the trailblazers to push for the existence of the National Weather Service,” says Tim Halbach the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Sullivan, Wisconsin.

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