Because I have something of an obsession with wind and weather, I recently read Scott Huler’s Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry. It turns out to be a fascinating, if somewhat eccentric, study of making something useable.
If nothing else, the book illustrates how the idea of usability is not a recent one. Huler’s interest began when he came across the Beaufort Scale in the Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Ninth Edition.
For example, on the scale force 6 isn’t just a number. It reads like this:
- Number – 6
- Name – strong breeze
- Miles per hour – 25 to 31
- Description – large branches in motion; telegraph wires whistle; umbrellas used with difficulty.
The description is key. The scale isn’t just numbers. When this version of the scale came about (19th century), each number had a description that gave genuine meaning to it. There was something a person from that period could readily relate to, like “… telegraph wires whistle; umbrellas used with difficulty.”
I found the book as intriguing to read as Huler seems to have found in writing it. In particular, I found Admiral Francis Beaufort himself fascinating. He appears to have been obsessed with making things clear, understandable, and useable—from the scale named after him to the making of maps. He was a usability expert before there were usability experts.
The book is a kind of idiosyncratic exploration of language and usability. And it’s interesting that it’s about something (and someone) from the 1800’s. It’s too bad the worlds of business and technology don’t have more Francis Beauforts. If he saw some of the user manuals that go with digital technology, he’d have a coronary.
(Written April, 2005)
