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The expedition contracts specified that the Committee of the Danmark Expedition would pay for all the scientific equipment, but declined to specify what that equipment might be. Each scientist had to plan his own program and then build, buy or borrow the instruments to carry it out. The Committee would have to approve the purchases, but the scientists were responsible for acquiring their equipment and getting it to Copenhagen by the middle of June. Each man had a budget. The more ingenuity he showed in stretching that amount, the more instrumentation he could take and the more science he could do.
On 28 March 1906, he wrote the followinga letter to Wladimir Köppen, head of the Meteorological Department of the German Marine Observatory at Hamburg, asking to buy meteorological kites. Aßmann immediately gave his blessing and promised twenty kites and three varnished-cotton captive balloons, at all cost. In a response to a letter sent with Berson's endorsement, de Bort not only agreed to sell Wegener two of his meteorographs at cost, but also made him a present of two additional meteorographs. Hans Gerdien agreed to loan him instruments for measuring atmospheric electricity, with instructions for their use.
{{Cquote|I presume to ask whether you would be inclined to sell me for a modest sum some of the kites of your design, or to have some new ones built for me}}
Aßmann immediately gave his blessing and promised twenty kites and three varnished-cotton captive balloons, at all cost. In a response to a letter sent with Berson's endorsement, de Bort not only agreed to sell Wegener two of his meteorographs at cost, but also made him a present of two additional meteorographs. Hans Gerdien agreed to loan him instruments for measuring atmospheric electricity, with instructions for their use.
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