British scientists at the College of Engineering, Tokyo, independently built seismographs in the 1880's. The British in Japan made many observations with their instruments and must be credited with first demonstrating the value to seismology of seismographic devices. Von Rebeur-Paschwitz obtained the first recording of a teleseism in 1889. In the next decade, investigators in Italy, Germany, and England studied the waves from distant earthquakes and constructed the first teleseismic travel-time charts. Wiechert introduced a seismometer with viscous damping in 1898.
Theory seems to have been neglected in the early development of the seismograph.
Theoretical studies of forced damped harmonic-oscillator seismographs were presented by Perry and Ayrton, and Lippmann, but these had little effect on the construction of seismographs. In the 1890's, the importance of tilt was much debated. By 1900, many seismologists had become convinced that the effect of tilting on seismograph response could usually be neglected. From the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America .