India Meteorological Department: set up by the Government of India as a central meteorological authority

Background

In 1875 the Government of India established the India Meteorological Department, bringing all meteorological work in the country under a central authority.
H. F. Blanford was appointed Meteorological Reporter to the Government of India.
The page records Sir John Eliot as the first Director General of Observatories, appointed in May 1889 at the Calcutta headquarters.
The headquarters later shifted to Shimla, then to Poona (now Pune) and finally to New Delhi.
India had older weather stations: Calcutta in 1785 and Madras in 1796, set up by the British East India Company.
Captain Harry Piddington of Calcutta coined the word cyclone, meaning the coil of a snake.
A disastrous tropical cyclone struck Calcutta in 1864, followed by monsoon failures in 1866 and 1871.