3-077-818 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The highest observatory in Europe, on the summit of the Sonnblick, 1890. 'It is on the summit of the Sonnblick that Herr Rojacher has erected a massive round tower, of stone, with an outside balcony, and a small house adjoining, 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 by the maximum and minimum thermometers, by the sunshine-recorder, the psychrometer, the hygrometer, and the hygrograph, by the anemometer, the barometer, and several other instruments three times every 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. the faithful observer on the Sonnblick...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.