Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
most famous was certainly Count Fernand de Montessus de Ballore (1851-1923)
(Hammond 1912; Renier 1923). In the years 1880-1907, Montessus de Ballore
compiled a new world catalogue, based on the catalogues of his predecessors and on
his own findings, mainly from the current press. His catalogue was not published,
but it was the basis for his milestone topics on seismology, and for his many articles.
Shortly before Montessus left France for Santiago to become director of the new
Chilean Seismological Service in 1907, he donated the file containing his seismic
catalogue to the
Societ´eGeographique
in Paris. The file was composed of folders
occupying a length of nearly 26 m in the library shelves. The library of the
Societe
Geographique
, after a first move, ended up in 1942 being concealed in the vaults of
the
Bibliotheque Nationale
in Paris, beyond reach of the German occupant (Fierro
1983). It remained the property of the
Societ´eGeographique
and is still located
there. The catalogue languished forgotten until Jean-Pierre Rothe, the director of
the
Institut de Physique du Globe
in Strasbourg, tried to locate it on the occasion
of the 50th anniversary of Montessus' death in Chile, in 1973. Unfortunately the
very librarian who had taken part in the 1942 move, by the 1970s graduated to
head librarian, was not able to find the file, and after a 4-year long correspondence
with Rothe the Geographical Society maintained that the file was definitely not in
its library. Failure to inspect the basement shelves with sufficient thoroughness pro-
longed the delay until September 1980, when the file was found by the new librarian.
Jean Vogt was the first to examine the catalogue; he asserted that the catalogue was
mostly a compilation of previous catalogues, particularly those of Perrey, except for
the recent years from 1885 to 1905 approximately, when Montessus brought his own
original information. The file is stored as 79 “parcels” -
colis
- (Montessus 1905);
an inventory has been made by (Fierro 1984). The complete file was microfilmed
recently. The catalogue for the period December 1902-February 1907 was published
in the periodical
Ciel et Terre
(Montessus de Ballore 1904-1907).
Though Montessus' catalogues do not provide us with a wealth of new sources,
his files represent the last global catalogue of historical earthquakes, including more
than 170,000 events. His objective was to produce seismic maps of the world. In
1892, he compiled the first seismic map of France which, we believe, did not dif-
fer dramatically from modern maps (Montessus de Ballore 1892). The remarkable
achievement of Montessus lies in the advanced geological conclusions he was able
to draw from these maps and from his profound knowledge of earthquakes, in the
first place being the link between earthquakes and Mesozoic geosynclines. He pub-
lished his results in numerous articles and several well-known topics notably that of
1906 (Montessus 1906).
2.3 The Bureau Central Meteorologique (BCM) and the Bureau
Central Sismologique Fran¸ais (BCSF)
In 1908, the
Service Sismologique
of the
Bureau Central de Meteorologie
(BCM)
was created under the direction of Alfred Angot (1848-1924). It initiated a
Search WWH ::
Custom Search