Anemometer

An anemometer is an instrument used to measure the speed, and in many designs also the direction, of wind or moving air, historically most often through a set of cups or a propeller-like vane that rotates at a rate proportional to wind speed, though modern instruments also use heated-wire, ultrasonic and laser-based methods. The cup anemometer, still among the most recognizable forms, was invented in 1846 by the Irish astronomer John Thomas Romney Robinson, improving on earlier, less reliable wind-measuring devices that had been used since antiquity, including simple wind vanes and pressure-plate instruments described as early as the work of Leon Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century. Anemometers are essential instruments in meteorology and climatology for weather observation and forecasting, and are also widely used in aviation, maritime navigation, structural engineering and the siting and operation of wind turbines, wherever accurate, real-time measurement of wind speed is required.