Archiving Early Seismological Records at the California Institute of Technology

Abstract

Seismology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) arose from an "arranged marriage" between two different traditions-a European interest in global earthquakes and an American concern for local earthquakes. Beno Gutenberg brought to Caltech the European tradition of viewing seismology as a research tool because seismic risk in western Europe is relatively low. He used earthquake records to investigate the physical properties and structure of the Earth's interior. Earthquake instruments installed in seismological stations around the world provided the data for this kind of analysis. Harry Oscar Wood, however, took a much more pragmatic view of the earthquake world as did most of his American colleagues. Concentrated in California, the American seismological community saw their research in terms of a highly localized seismic risk. To a seismologist like Wood, Gutenberg's global problem shrank to the size of southern California. In bringing these two men together in Pasadena in 1930, the President of Caltech, Robert A. Millikan, set in motion a chain of events that was ultimately to lead Charles Richter to develop the first earthquake magnitude scale.

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