One afternoon in February 1854, an announcement was made in the House of Commons. A new government department was to be formed, to collect and digest meteorological observations made on board merchant and Royal Navy ships. Six months later, the Meteorological Office was born.

When the Office took its first tentative steps, it had a staff of four and a budget of a few thousand pounds per year. Since then, Britain’s national meteorological service has experienced several major changes in control and organization and is now an Executive Agency and Trading Fund responsible to the United Kingdom (UK) government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, with a staff of nearly two thousand and a turnover of nearly 200 hundred million pounds per year. It is a scientific and technological institution of national and international importance, serving not only the shipping industry but also many other groups of users, including the general public. It is also at the forefront of fundamental pure and applied research in meteorology and related sciences and, moreover, cooperates and interacts with the international meteorological community at administrative, operational and research levels. What were the origins of this institution? How did it come to be founded?