Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
“Making It Local”
even as he fought political battles in Washington, Branner pursued the
other prong of his seismological program: enlisting local observers. His cor-
respondence from 1911 and 1912 is filled with letters soliciting new mem-
bers for the SSA, as many as 2,500 of them.
71
these efforts flagged only after
1913, when his new duties as president of Stanford University took prec-
edence. Branner expected that his correspondents would not immediately
recognize the value of felt reports. He explained that the investigation of an
earthquake should collect “any facts that can be had of residents. Such notes
seem worthless at first glance, but it often happens that we are enabled
by them to determine the area and intensity of shocks.”
72
Branner quickly
perfected a pragmatic, antielitist tone and a grassroots rhetoric. One letter
to a J. S. Rossiter in Pasadena announced, “As president of the Seismologi-
cal Society of America I am trying to get the people of this state interested
in earthquakes. to that end we want to get as many members as possible
so that we can after a while organize some sort of systematic collection of
data. . . . if you give me the names of a few others who will help I shall be
greatly obliged to you. no particular skill or knowledge is required.”
73
When
Rossiter agreed to join and mailed his two dollars the following week, Bran-
ner replied, “It is pleasant to run across people who take a rational view
of earthquakes. We cannot conceal from ourselves or from others that we
have them, and the reasonable thing seems to be to study them and to find
out how we can prevent their doing serious damages. that is what sensible
people do about disagreeable things of all sorts. If we can get the coopera-
tion of a large number of persons on this coast we shall soon have the earth-
quake business run into its hole.”
74
A letter to a mining engineer expressed
a modest view of seismological expertise: “none of us knows much about
earthquakes, but if we all try to find out we hope to know something after
a while.”
75
By the summer of 1911, then, a preliminary network was in place. On
1 July, a strong earthquake struck central California—strong enough to throw
the seismographs at the Lick Observatory and at Santa Clara College out
of order. As Harry Wood put it, it proved impossible to obtain an “unmu-
tilated” seismogram of the event. It would have been an ideal test case of
Branner's observing network, but for the fact that Branner was out of town,
on a research trip to Brazil. Without his prompting, the network failed to
spring into action. the collection of reports did not begin until Branner's
return in late August, when he assigned the task to one of his graduate stu-
dents. the conclusion was that the earthquake had reached a maximum
