Albert J. Myer

Albert James Myer (1828 to 1880) was an American physician and United States Army officer best remembered for founding the Army Signal Corps. Born in Newburgh, New York, he took his medical degree at Buffalo Medical College in 1851, and his doctoral thesis on a sign language for deaf mutes already contained the ideas he later turned into aerial telegraphy. After a period of private medical practice in Florida he entered the Army in 1854 as an assistant surgeon and served at frontier posts in Texas. There he developed wigwag signaling, a code of single-flag or lantern signals that the Army adopted in 1859 and that both sides used in the Civil War. He became the first chief signal officer and is also called the father of the Weather Bureau.