A weather vane is an instrument, technically a type of anemoscope, that shows the direction of the wind and is usually mounted at the highest point of a building. The earliest known textual references to weather vanes come from ancient Babylon between 1800 and 1600 BC, and the Tower of the Winds in Hellenistic Athens carried a rotating bronze Triton weather vane around 50 BC. Weather vanes took on religious meaning in Christianity after Pope Gregory I linked the rooster to Saint Peter, and by the ninth century rooster shaped vanes had become common on church steeples across Europe.
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Weather vane (Wikipedia)
In Field: Mechanical Engineering, Lead paragraphQuote, In Field: Mechanical Engineering, Lead paragraph
A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is a type of anemoscope used for showing the direction of the wind.
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