During the winter of 1837-38 Louis Daguerre in Paris was perfecting his daguerre-type technique. Across the Atlantic, Samuel Morse experimented with code. In London, it was Queen Victoria's first winter on the British throne. And Patrick Murphy esq was rejoicing in a stroke of luck that had brought him speedy fame and fortune.
The Christmas had been mild, but early January saw the onset of a mini-Ice Age. There were frequent bouts of snow, the Thames froze, and the gentry played cricket on village ponds' ice. It was this, the most vicious cold snap for a generation, that proved so lucrative for Patrick Murphy.
Murphy was not, as one might suspect, an Irishman, but an English dilettante of the sciences whose published works included books and papers on gravity, electricity and the solar system, and two pedestrian works on meteorology.
But all except one are forgotten.
Like many 18th- and early 19th-century scientists, Murphy was convinced that weather changes were related to the moon, to other planets and even animal behaviour, and in 1837 he produced a magnum opus with the grandiose and not quite snappy title, The Weather Almanac - on Scientific Principles, showing the State of the Weather for Every Day of the Year of 1838.
He was not the first, and not indeed the last, to attempt the prodigious feat of day-by-day predictions for a year ahead. Nor do we know anything about his methodology. But he hit the jackpot with his forecast for January 20th, which was "Fair, and probably the lowest degree of winter temperature".
By chance it turned out to be one of the coldest days ever recorded in the south of England, with the thermometer dropping to 20 Celsius in London. Murphy became famous and wealthy on the spot. His 1838 Almanac ran to 45 editions, customers mobbed his publishers to get the book and the author himself made a profit of more than £3,000, then a very considerable sum.
But Murphy's hour was brief. Almost immediately, it seems, he lost his windfall on an unsuccessful speculation on the corn market.
After the initial riotous success, sales of the Almanac languished as it became evident that no faith could be placed in its prognostications. He tried again in 1839, and in various other years until his death in 1847, but the sales were very limited.
His only enduring legacy was that for a generation afterwards the harsh weather conditions of early 1838 were universally recalled as "Murphy's Winter".