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The 1855 Visp (Switzerland) Earthquake:
A Milestone in Macroseismic Methodology?
M. Gisler, J. Kozak and J. Vanek
Abstract
The first attempts to establish macroseismic intensity reach back to the
17th century. But it was not until the late 19th century that seismic intensity scales,
tectonic faults and individual types of seismic waves were routinely studied and
recorded. Observational seismology, macroseismic observation and earthquake clas-
sification in the early 19th century was so cumbersome and slow that these data
were not commonly used and often forgotten. In mid 19th century, two researchers,
G.H.O. Volger and A. Petermann, made a fundamental contribution to macroseismic
damage classification by plotting the 1855 Visp earthquake; an endeavor that can be
seen as the beginning of macroseismic methodology. In this essay we follow the
thread of this early contribution to macroseismology, and ask for its impact and its
early successors.
1 Introduction
It is well known that strong and disastrous seismic events stimulate the increased
interest and professional attention of naturalists, scholars, philosophers, engineers
and other intellectuals. It follows that large seismic disasters are often regarded as
important milestones in the process of a more advanced and scientific understanding
of the Earth. In 2005 we commemorated the anniversary of the 1855 Visp earthquake
in the Valais, Switzerland, which gave us the opportunity to study the event and the
question of its incentive on macroseismic methodology. In what follows, we present
an historical survey of the endeavors before the 1855 earthquake and discuss its
effects on the work of G.H.O. Volger and A. Petermann, who took the initiative
to establish a measurement scale of the event and plot it on geographical maps,
endeavors that are still widely used today.
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