Question

In the early eighteenth century, meteorology struggled to establish standardized observational networks due to the idiosyncratic calibration of thermometric scales. Early instrument makers like Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur devised temperature scales based on vastly different fixed reference points and expansions of liquids—mercury and alcohol, respectively. However, the primary obstacle to early meteorological synthesis was less the proliferation of disparate scales than the pervasive assumption among natural philosophers that thermal phenomena were purely local anomalies dictated by micro-topography rather than systemic atmospheric patterns. Because investigators viewed thermometric variance primarily as an indicator of site-specific microclimates, they rarely attempted to synchronize readings across distant geographic nodes or correct for structural differences in instrument construction. Consequently, late-eighteenth-century network initiatives succeeded not merely because they introduced uniform instruments, but because they reflected a paradigm shift toward conceptualizing temperature as an indicator of macro-scale thermodynamic systems.

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage regarding eighteenth-century meteorological investigations conducted prior to the late-eighteenth-century network initiatives?