Albert James Myer (September 20, 1828 – August 24, 1880) was a surgeon and U.S. Army officer. He is known as the father of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, as its first chief signal officer , and also as the father of the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Myer was born in Newburgh, New York. He worked as a telegrapher before entering Geneva College (now Hobart College) in Geneva, New York. He received his M.D. degree from Buffalo Medical College in 1851. His doctoral thesis, A New Sign Language for Deaf Mutes, showed concepts that he later used for his invention of aerial telegraphy. He entered private medical practice in Florida and then sought a commission as a U.S. Army assistant surgeon (captain), entering service September 18, 1854. His major interest of the time, besides medicine, was to devise a system of signaling across long distances, using simple codes and lightweight materials. This system of codes using a single signal flag (or a lantern or kerosene torch at night), known as wig-wag signaling or aerial telegraphy, would be adopted and used by both sides in the American Civil War and afterwards.

(Note: Myer's signaling system should not be confused with semaphore signaling. The wig-wag system used a single flag, waved back and forth in a binary code conceptually similar to Morse Code; semaphores used two flags and each character to be transmitted had a unique pattern for holding the flags.)

In 1858, the Army expressed interest in Myer's invention and appointed a board to examine "the principles and plans of the signalling, mode of use in the field, and course to be pursued in introducing to the army." He conducted field tests in 1859 around New York Harbor. That year he was promoted to major and named chief signal officer of the Army. On June 21, 1860, a letter from the War Department ordered him to organize and command the new U.S. Army Signal Corps. The Signal Corps would not commence as an official Army organization until March 3, 1863, at which time Myer was promoted to colonel. Between these two dates, Myer served as the chief signal officer for Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac in its campaigns from the Peninsula Campaign to the Battle of Antietam.

Ironically, the first use in combat of Myer's system was by Confederate Captain Edward Porter Alexander at the First Battle of Bull Run. Alexander had been a subordinate of Myer's and assisted in the New York field trials.

Myer's Signal Corps was actually a separate entity from the War Department bureau responsible for military telegraphy. He had numerous organizational disputes with the assistant secretary of war for this function, which resulted in his reassignment out of Washington, D.C. to the Military Division of the West Mississippi. While conducting routine reconnaissance of the Mississippi River, he wrote the Manual of Signals for the United States Army and Navy. From July 1864 to July 1866 he was relieved from duty on the Mississippi due to disputes with Washington regarding the specifics of his assignments, such as negotiating the terms of surrender of Fort Gaines. He served as signal officer for the Department of the Gulf August 1864 to 1865.

On March 13, 1865, Myer received the brevet rank of brigadier general; on July 28, 1866, Congress reorganized the Signal Corps and, with the permanent rank of colonel, he again became chief signal officer.

The U.S. Congress, on February 9, 1870, authorized "... meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the states and territories of the United States, and for giving notice on the northern lakes and seaboard by telegraph and signals of the approach and force of storms". This duty, previously conducted by the Smithsonian Institution, was assigned to General Myer's Signal Corps, due in part to his previous interests in storm telegraphy. It was the birth of the U.S. Weather Bureau, now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Myer headed the Signal Corps from August 21, 1867, until his death at Buffalo, New York in 1880. He is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo. He leaves behind three namesake legacies: Fort Myer, Virginia; U.S. Navy Ship (formerly U.S. Army Ship) Albert J. Myer, T-ARC 6, an undersea cable-laying vessel built in the 1950s; and General Albert J. Myer Forecast Facility at the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport.