Guide 19th century when Alpine climbing became recognized as a sport. In Switzerland, the central committee of the Swiss Alpine Club issues a guides’ tariff which fixes the charges for guides and porters; there are three sections, for the Valais and Vaudois Alps, for the Bernese Oberland, and for central and eastern Switzerland. In Chamonix (France) a statue has been raised to Jacques Balmat, who was the first to climb Mont Blanc in 1786. Other notable European guides are Christian Almer, Jakob and Melchior Anderegg, Auguste Balmat, Alexander Burgener, Armand Charlet, Michel Croz, François Devouassoud, Angelo Dibona, Andreas Heckmair, the family,
Horace-Bénédict de Saussure Chamonix men, Michel Paccard and Jacques Balmat, attained the summit in 1786, by way of the Grands Mulets, and in 1787 Saussure himself made the third ascent of the mountain. His achievements did much to attract tourists to places such as Chamonix. Obsessed by the measurement of meteorological phenomena, Saussure invented and improved many kinds of apparatus, including the magnetometer, the cyanometer for estimating the blueness of the sky, the diaphanometer for judging the clarity of the atmosphere, the anemometer and the mountain eudiometer. Of particular importance was a hair hygrometer that he devised and used for a series of