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ment in the recording of natural phenomena.”
67
However, like so many
California scientists before him, Palmer thought he knew all the results al-
ready. At the end of 1915, he was confident that no sensible earthquake in
California had gone unreported. More shocks had been noted on the state's
5 percent of the total area of the United States than in the other 95 percent.
68
Yet his report would be “incomplete” if he did not add that California's
earthquakes were less hazardous than hurricanes and tornadoes elsewhere
in the country. Indeed, his “inevitable conclusion” after five years of macro-
seismic surveys was that California's tremors possessed “a constancy from
year to year,” indicating that “these slightly but constantly recurring trem-
ors may well be regarded as a safety valve in efficient operation.”
69
Palmer
offered the public little incentive to report on the weaker movements that
could have helped locate faults.
At the national level, oversight of the bureau's seismological program
was handed to William J. Humphreys, an atmospheric physicist who had
trained in the high-precision physics laboratory of Henry Rowland. Hum-
phreys defined “modern seismology” in 1914 as a highly technical, instru-
mental science. It was “so very modern as to require considerable liberality
in conceding it an age of even 30 to 40 years.” “Modern seismology” had
originated with the first instruments capable of detecting otherwise in-
sensible tremors, as well as the geophysical expertise and “none too easy
mathematics” necessary to interpret the instrumental records. Yet Hum-
phrey worried that “modern seismology” had thereby acquired an image
problem. “From this it might seem that seismology is an ideal subject for
the private diversion of the abstract scientist, as indeed it is. those who at-
tempt difficult problems for the mere exhilaration they afford, or revel in the
luxury of intricate equations, can find in seismology every excuse for end-
less self-indulgence.” Clearly, such a field would be hard-pressed to attract
either government funding or popular participation, especially with a war
brewing in europe. But there was another side to seismology, Humphreys
remarked, one that could in fact engage “the engineer” or “the man of af-
fairs”: the location of active faults. this was a topic of immediate relevance
to “a careful engineer” contemplating the erection of a bridge across a fault,
or to “a properly informed and prudent banker” asked to invest in such a
project.
70
Under the Weather Bureau, then, earthquake observing was defined nar-
rowly at both the state and national levels. It was a practical effort, divorced
from the “modern” science of seismology, and serving the needs of engi-
neers and businessmen. In California, it was expected to produce only fur-
ther evidence of long-term environmental stability.
