Perhaps no other scientist to this day was revered as much as Albany-born Joseph Henry, and yet he is little known among today's public.

Joseph, the son of teamster William Henry and Ann Alexander was born in Albany in 1797, the year Albany became Capital of New York.

Of Scottish descent, his father, an alcoholic, died when Henry was thirteen and he spent much of his youth living with his grandmother in nearby Galway.

Self educated, Henry was accepted to the Albany Academy, a private boy's school that opened only seven years after his birth, but was to be instrumental in his science career. He attended the Academy between 1819 and 1822, while in his twenties, and became a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy (physics) at the Academy in 1826.

Besides teaching, Henry pursued his interest in experimental science at the Academy and brought him national recognition through his original research on electromagnetics. A year after he began teaching, Henry presented his first paper on October 10, 1827, at the Albany Institute.

Henry discovered mutual electromagnetic induction--the production of an electric current from a magnetic field--and electromagnetic self-induction independently of England's Michael Faraday.

During the early 1830s, Henry constructed some of the most powerful electromagnets, an oar separator, a prototype telegraph, and the first electric motor. He also is given credit for encouraging Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone.

Henry built a 21-pound "Albany magnet" which supported 750 pounds, making it the most powerful magnet ever constructed at the time. He described his experiments in a paper published in the American Journal of Science, a widely read and influential publication in January, 1831.

In 1832, Henry began teaching at Princeton and continued his work in electromagnetism, but also turned to the study of auroras, lightning, sunspots, ultraviolet light, and molecular cohesion. His interest in meteorology began in Albany while collecting weather data and compiling reports of statewide meteorological observations for the State University with T.R. Beck, principal of Albany Academy. Ironically, it was Beck who convinced Henry to attend the Academy countering an offer from the Albany Green Street Theater where Henry was pursuing an encouraging acting career.

In 1846, Henry was elected Secretary of the newly established Smithsonian Institution, and guided the institution until his death. He was instrumental in fostering research in a variety of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, botany, geophysics, meteorology, and zoology.

One of his first priorities as head of the Smithsonian was to set up "a system of extended meteorological observations for solving the problem of American storms." Henry began creating the national weather service.

By 1849, he had a budget of $1,000 and a network of some 150 volunteer weather observers. Ten years later, the project had more than 600 volunteers including people in Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The Smithsonian supplied volunteers with instructions, standardized forms, and instruments. The volunteers submitted monthly reports that included observations on temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, wind, cloud conditions, and precipitation levels. Comments were also solicited on events such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, meteors, and auroras.

In 1861, the first of a two- volume compilation of climatic data and storm observations based on their reports for the years 1854 -1859 were published.

His observations of weather patterns or storms, moving west to east, gave him the idea in 1847 that he could use telegraphy to warn the northern and eastern part of the country on advancing storms, giving the rise to weather forecasting.

By 1857, Henry had a number of telegraph companies transmitting weather data for free to the Smithsonian.

To gain an overview of this information, Henry created a large daily weather map to show weather conditions across the country. In 1856, this map was displayed in the Smithsonian for the public to view and became a popular attraction. By May 1857, Henry shared the information with the Washington Evening Star and they began publishing daily weather conditions giving rise to the now daily weather page. His map also allowed some forecasting ability but his plan to predict storm warnings to the east coast was squashed due to the advent of the Civil War. After the war, Henry wrote in his annual report in 1865 that the federal government should establish a national weather service to predict weather conditions. In 1870, Congress put storm and weather predictions in the hands of the U.S. Army's Signal Service, and in 1874, Henry convinced the Signal Service to absorb his volunteer observer system. In 1891, the newly created U.S. Weather Bureau (now National Weather Service), took over the weather functions of the Signal Service.

Henry directed the Smithsonian for nearly 32 years, and when he died the government closed for his funeral on May 16, 1878, a funeral attended by the President, Vice-President, the Cabinet, the members of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the senior officers of the Army and the Navy.

After his death, Alexander Graham Bell arranged for Henry's wife Harriet to have free phone service out of his appreciation for Henry's early encouragement.

In 1893, the International Congress of Electricians named the international unit of inductance "the henry," in his honor. More than a dozen items have been named in his honor.