TED-Ed: How did clouds get their names? - Richard Hamblyn

In 1802, Luke Howard, a pharmacist with a passion for meteorology, presented a lecture that revolutionized the understanding of clouds. He classified clouds into three main types: cirrus, cumulus, and stratus, and introduced intermediate types to account for their changing nature. This classification had a profound impact, inspiring poets like Goethe and Shelley, and artists like Constable. Howard's work made clouds easier to study as indicators of atmospheric processes, revealing that they follow the same physical laws as other Earthly phenomena. His contributions laid the foundation for nephology, the study of clouds.

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