Safety networks: fishery barometers and the outsourcing of judgement at the early Meteorological Department.

The article focuses on a project on the distribution of fishery barometers to poor fishing communities. The project was started by admiral Robert FitzRoy, the first head of Great Britain's Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade in 1854. The distribution continued after FitzRoy's death in 1865. It discusses the use of the tools of telegraphy and synoptic mapping to predict the weather in Great Britain. Later the fishery barometers distributed by FitzRoy and the Met Department were excluded from the wider project to map British and global weather. This step helped augment the autonomy of their intended users and in making the fishers more independent interpreters of the Met Office forecasts.