3-077-817 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Sonnblick Mountain, in the Austrian Alps, 10,154 feet high, 1890. 'Herr Rojacher, proprietor of the gold-mines in the Rauris valley, liberally provided, at his own cost, a station for daily meteorological observations at a height far above that of any other observatory in Europe...Around the Sonnblick mountain, whenever the clouds disperse or open, the prospect in most directions is all snow and ice...It is on the summit of the Sonnblick that Herr Rojacher has erected a massive round tower...for the abode of Peter Lechner, the solitary inhabitant, who was formerly a miner, and is now employed to attend to the scientific instruments at this lofty station. Lechner has spent three winters in his lonely aerial hermitage, where he passes the entire year, and has not once failed in his daily task. He has to make observations...three times a day...and to send the figures by telephone and telegraph to the Central Meteorological Station in Vienna. Thence they are forwarded to the whole world, and the weather forecasts published by the newspapers are partially based upon the readings of Peter Lechner...Our Illustrations are from drawings and photographs taken by Herr Heilmann, and by Lieutenant-Colonel Albert von Obermayer, of the Austrian Army'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.