Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
one abroad, just as the 1812 earthquake in Caracas had reportedly been felt
in a village near Comrie. 28 On the occasion of a stronger shock in Comrie in
1839, the Times noted a coincidence with earthquakes in Calabria and Savoy
and concluded that the events must share an origin deep within the earth. 29
In the wake of the Messina disaster of 1908, one Swiss editor wondered,
“Will the countries situated to the north of Italy also be threatened? We
know that a strong shock of earthquake was felt on the 18th of December in
Coutances. A few days later another was reported at Angers. Monday, one
was indicated in the valleys of the district of Oloron. the seismograph of
the faculty of sciences at Grenoble recorded a seismic shock Monday at four
thirty-three in the morning. these two last phenomena coincided with the
shocks felt in Malta at the same hour. Finally they are being reported in the
United States as well; a telegram from Virginia City, in Montana, announces
that violent seismic shocks were felt Monday in that city.” 30 the papers also
invited reports of seismic coincidences by printing earthquake forecasts that
covered as wide an area as “Persia, Asia Minor, Greece, Northern Italy, or
Carniola” and soliciting confirmations from around the world. 31
In this apparent chaos, seismologists sought patterns. Perrey was the
first to remark on the near simultaneity of earthquakes at distances as great
as those between “holland and Spain, Lisbon and Saxony, Calabria and
Maurienne, Savoy and Scotland.” 32 In 1911 John Milne pointed to seis-
mographic evidence that one earthquake could trigger another remotely.
he theorized that long-period waves from large earthquakes could “travel
round the world, causing the crust of the same to rise and fall like a raft on
an ocean swell.” 33 Seismologists recognized the fascination of this small-
world vision for newspaper readers. Albin Belar described planetary-scale
standing waves in a Viennese paper in 1907: “After great catastrophes, the
diametrically opposed points of the earth, in particular—that is, the antipo-
dal points—are sympathetically affected, so that it is quite possible that one
earthquake can trigger or at least prepare another. . . . One could say that the
entire crust resounds, and where the frightful fundamental tone is struck,
there death and desolation reign.” 34 Belar asked his readers to imagine the
entire earth ringing like a bell with a “world-shaking music,” recorded by a
world-spanning network of geophysical observatories pressed like gigantic
ears to the ground (see figure 3.1). the British seismologist Charles Davi-
son, whose first concern was always the human impact of earthquakes, once
remarked somewhat bitterly that “it is the registration of a distant earth-
quake, not the havoc wrought by it, that appeals to the public with an un-
failing interest.” 35
rockwood's massive scrapbooks are an early case of a broader trend.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search