Thomas Corwin Mendenhall was an American autodidact physicist and meteorologist. He was the first professor hired at Ohio State University in 1873 and the superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1889 to 1894. Alongside his work, he was also an advocate for the adoption of the metric system by the United States and is the father of author profiling.
Thomas Corwin Mendenhall
Mendenhall in 1890
Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, the first physics teacher in Tokyo, Japan with his interpreter Kikuchi (right) and grad students c. 1880
Mendenhall Gravimeter Pendulums
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey was the first scientific agency of the United States Government. It existed from 1807 to 1970, and throughout its history was responsible for mapping and charting the coast of the United States, and later the coasts of U.S. territories. In 1871, it gained the additional responsibility of surveying the interior of the United States and geodesy became a more important part of its work, leading to it being renamed the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878.
The seal of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler was the first superintendent of the Survey of the Coast, renamed the U.S. Coast Survey during his tenure.
A survey of the Mississippi River in Louisiana below Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip made by the U.S. Coast Survey to prepare for the bombardment of the forts by David Dixon Porter's mortar fleet in April 1862 during the American Civil War.
The Richards Building, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey headquarters from 1871 to 1929, on New Jersey Avenue in Washington, D.C., from Harper's Weekly, October 1888.
