Ewing Horizontal Pendulum Seismograph (part)
date: label: date made
content: ca 1892
notes: label: Description
content: Of the several seismographs that he designed while teaching physics and engineering in Meiji Japan, James Alfred Ewing was particularly excited about the horizontal pendulum form, describing it as “novel” and “certainly far superior to the long pendulum seismograph in simplicity and cheapness of construction, ease of use, and accuracy of results.” In 1886, after his return to Scotland, Ewing boasted that his “seismographs have been in regular use at the University of Tokio since they were invented” and were “used for systematic observations by the Japanese Meteorological Bureau.” He also boasted that seismographs based on his designs were “sent by the Japanese Government to the Inventions Exhibition in London” and “awarded the highest diploma among Government exhibits.”
label: Description
content: The Imperial Japanese Commission to the World’s Columbian Exposition sent an example to Chicago in 1893 and gave it to Smithsonian the following year. Only one of the two horizontal elements survives. This is a brass weight in the form of a truncated cone that is suspended over a flat triangular base, 8-inches on a side. It would have been attached to a pointer that would record the earth’s movements on a smoked glass plate.
label: Description
content: Ref: James A. Ewing, “On a New Seismograph,” <i>Proceedings of the Royal Society of London</i> 31 (1881): 440-446, illus. on 441.
label: Description
content: James A. Ewing, “Seismometry in Japan,” <i>Nature</i> 35 (1886-87): 75-76.
label: Description
content: <i>Catalogue of Objects Exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 by the Department of Education, Japan</i> (Tokyo, 1893), pp. 55-57.
label: Description
content: George Browne Goode, <i>The Smithsonian Institution 1846-1896. The History of Its First Half Century</i> (Washington, D.C., 1897), vol. 3, pp. 547-548.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Japan: Tōkyō, Tokyo
topic: label: related event
content: World's Columbian Exposition
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
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content: Seismographs
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content: Science & Mathematics
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content: Measuring & Mapping
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.315165
label: catalog number
content: 315165
label: accession number
content: 219145
objectType: label: Object Name
content: seismograph
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 1/8 in x 9 7/8 in x 8 1/2 in; 20.6375 cm x 25.0825 cm x 21.59 cm