Geoscience Reference
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“one excellent kind of a seismograph . . . that we can all use to great advan-
tage if we will only set about it, and will take the trouble to put the records
on paper and send them in. I refer to our own bodies.”
58
It therefore seemed
natural to Branner that seismology should be administered by the Weather
Bureau, with its network of volunteer observers.
Soon after becoming president of the SSA, Branner pressed this view on
the Weather Bureau's chief, Willis Moore. the bureau, Branner wrote, with
its “large working organization covering the entire national domain, its per-
manent stations, and its intelligent observers trained to make observations
and reports every day only needs a slight broadening of its field and the
necessary equipment, funds, etc. to make it immediately the most effective
organization in the world for gathering and using seismological data.”
59
to
Senator Frank Briggs, member of the Committee on the Geological Survey,
Branner urged that “seismological investigations, in order to be efficient,
must have a large number of observers, and that those observers must be
accustomed to making, recording, and sending in certain observations.”
emphasizing the value of lay volunteers, he noted that “these observers do
not need to be geologists, but it is of the utmost importance that they be
numerous, and that they be widely distributed over the area to be studied.
It is only by such means that it is, or can ever be, possible to locate the
seismologically active faults, zones or centres.” Otherwise, he warned, “the
machinery of the Weather Bureau would have to be practically duplicated at
great expense and with much delay.”
60
Of course, the Weather Bureau had
collected seismological observations for years in an unsystematic way and
without expending any significant portion of its budget to do so. Making
this function official would hardly seem like a matter for controversy.
In 1909, however, Charles Walcott had succeeded Samuel Langley as
director of the Smithsonian Institution. Walcott was soon lobbying Con-
gress to establish a national seismological service—under the auspices of
the Smithsonian. Branner feared that his opposition to Walcott's plan “is
liable to be regarded as a purely personal affair which it is certainly not.”
61
In 1910 the treasury Department explicitly barred the Weather Bureau from
applying its funds to earthquake research. the
New York Times
reported the
verdict with a jeer: “the Controller says seismology relates to what is under-
ground, while meteorology relates to conditions above ground. therefore
the study of seismology is not comprehended in the work of the Weather
Bureau.” An editorial described it as a decision made “in a moment of truly
departmental inspiration.” Surely the treasury's controller would now be
invited to join the world's elite scientific societies: “Possibly they will first
