Albert J. Myer

Albert James Myer was a surgeon and United States Army officer. He is known as the father of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, as its first chief signal officer just prior to the American Civil War, the inventor of wigwag signaling , and also as the father of the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Myer was born in Newburgh, New York, son of Henry Beekman Myer and Eleanor McClanahan Myer. The family moved to Western New York and after the death of his mother in 1834, he was raised primarily by his aunt in Buffalo. He worked as a telegrapher before entering Geneva College in Geneva, New York, in 1842, at age 13, and from where he was graduated in 1847 as a member of The Kappa Alpha Society. He received his M.D. degree from Buffalo Medical College in 1851, while working parttime for the New York State Telegraph Company. His doctoral thesis, A New Sign Language for Deaf Mutes, showed concepts that he later used for his invention of aerial telegraphy. Although he inherited a large fortune from his family, he was ambitious and intellectually curious. It was said that he was specially noted for the manner in which he would take hold of an idea or principle, and, following it to its length and breadth, develop all there was in it or of it.

Source: Wikipedia