At the Annual Meeting of the RIC on 31 October 1856, Dr Charles Barham, the senior physician at the Royal Cornwall Infirmary, gave an impromptu talk on the history of meteorology in Cornwall. This history, Barham noted, was a long one. The results of meteorological observations held by the Institution stretched back almost a hundred years, beginning with those kept by the Gregor family at their estate at Trewarthenick from 1765 to 1787; then those of Mr James of Redruth from 1787 to 1817; and Mr Edward Giddy's records from 1807 to 1827. Barham claimed that these observations predated those of the Royal Society of London and ‘that the possession of records for a long period was necessary for the establishment of general laws in almost any case, and particularly in reference to climate’. A long-running record of the weather, combined with present-day observations, he claimed, would allow the meteorologist to determine whether there had been temporal changes in the climate of an area or, conversely, whether local climates were static and unchanging. Cornwall was well placed to contribute to this agenda.

In his talk, Barham went on to argue for the more general value of meteorological data. Having a number of weather stations across a region would provide information on the geography of weather and climate, he claimed. This was critical for a county like Cornwall, which relied so heavily on tourism, fishing and agriculture. Invalids, Barham claimed, needed to know whether a milder climate would be found in Newquay or Penzance; sailors needed to know from which direction the prevailing wind came and which course storms usually followed; while farmers needed to know which areas were usually damp and which dry.

The application of meteorological information to the improvement of industry, health and wealth was not of course restricted to the county of Cornwall. The 1850s was a decade where meteorology became widely pursued. Only two years prior to Barham's talk, the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade had been established, under the stewardship of Robert FitzRoy.