Alfred Wegener: Difference between revisions
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Alfred, once again unable to stand the suspense, took a train the next day to Copenhagen, arriving on Mylius-Erichsen's doorstep. With money in hand and little time to waste, Mylius-Erichsen was now prepared to take Alfred's participation seriously. When they finally met face to face, he made a decision on the spot and formally offered Alfred the job of physicist and meteorlogist on the expedition, with the provision that he would also be expected to make geological observations and to take part in the cartographic and position-finding work. They signed a preliminary agreement and discussed salary. Mylius-Erichsen told Alfred that he should prepare his personal and scientific kit immediately, since the expedition would leave in less than three months.
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 following letter to Wladimir Köppen, head of the Meteorological Department of the German Marine Observatory at Hamburg.
{{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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