Quantitative Analysis of Early Seismograph Recordings - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 386

obtained from old seismograms, its special characteristics and processing and some
possibilities they offer for actual research have been reviewed. Special attention has
been paid to the processing procedures, from the scanning of the record image to
the generation of a digital seismogram useful for modern seismic analysis tools.
Often, the older the seismogram, the more critical is the accurate control of issues
like image resolution and adequate instrument performance, complicating the whole
procedure. All these factors point to the conclusion that image acquisition and the
consecutive digitization and restitution of ground displacement is, in general, a time
consuming process. This limits the scope of the different campaigns developed at
several institutions to recover and make available those records. Despite those dif-
ficulties, the reprocessing of old seismograms for inversion of source parameters
can - and did- yield results highly relevant for science and society.
Acknowledgments We highly appreciate the commitment of many individuals and institutions to
preserve historic seismograms and related data, and make them available to the scientific commu-
nity. We are grateful to Luis Rivera for careful reading of the manuscript and valuable suggestions.
Part of the research presented in this paper received financial support by the Spanish DGI projects
HUM2004-04259/HIST. 2004-6, CGL2004-20332-E. 2005-6 and CGL2005-04541-C03-01-BTE.
2005-2007, and EC Network SPICE, MRTN-CT-2003-504267.
Bibliography
Abe K (1981) Magnitudes of large shallow earthquakes from 1904 to 1980. Phys. Earth Planet.
In. 27: 72-92.
Adams WM and Allen DC (1961) Reading seismograms with digital computers. Bull. Seism. Soc.
Am . 51: 61-67.
Agnew DC (2002) History of Seismology. In: Lee WHK, Kanamori H, Jennings PC and Kisslinger
K(eds) International Handbook of Earthquake & Engineering Seismology . Academic Press,
Amsterdam, pp 3-11.
Alvarado P and Beck S (2006) Source characterization of the San Juan (Argentina) crustal earth-
quakes of 15 January 1944 (Mw 7.0) and 11 June 1952 (Mw 6.8). Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 243:
615-631.
Baroux E, Pino NA, Valensise G, Scotti O and Cushing ME (2003) Source parameters of the
11 June 1909, Lambesc (Provence, southeastern France) earthquake: A reappraisal based
on macroseismic, seismological, and geodetic observations. J. Geophys. Res. 108: 2454,
doi:10.1029/2002JB002348.
Baskoutas IG, Kalogeras IS, Kourouzidis M and Panopoulou G (2000) A modern technique for the
retrieval and processing of historical sesimograms in Greece. Nat. Hazards 21: 55-64.
Batll o J, Susagna T and Roca A (1997) A processing system for old records of regional earth-
quakes: Analysis of the 19th November 1923 earthquake in the Pyrenees. Cahiers du Centre
Europeen de Geodynamique et de Seismologie 13: 149-157.
Batll o J and Bormann P (2000) A catalog of old Spanish seismographs, Seismol. Res. Lett . 71:
570-582.
Batll o J (2004) Cat´alogo-InventariodeSismografos Antiguos Espa noles . Instituto Geografico
Nacional, Madrid, 414pp.
Batll o J, Clemente C, Perez-Blanco F, and Vidal F (2004) Reconstruction of a Bosch-Omori Seis-
mograph. Nuncius 19: 701-711.
Batll o J, Stich D, Palombo B, Macia R and Morales J (2008) The 1951, Mw 5.2 and 5.3, Jaen
(S-Spain) earthquake doublet revisited. Bull. Seism. Soc. Am ., 98: 1535-1545.