Gray-Milne Seismograph
date: label: date made
content: around 1892
name: label: maker
content: Kyo iku-Hin-Seizo Kwaisha
notes: label: Description
content: Modern seismology owes much to the Western scientists and engineers who, while serving as teachers and technical advisors in Meiji Japan, designed and produced seismic instruments, recorded earthquakes, established the Japanese Seismological Society, and trained the first generation of Japanese seismologists. One important member of this group was John Milne, an Englishman who went to Tokyo in 1876 to teach mining and geology at the Imperial College of Engineering and who, after experiencing his first earthquakes, dedicated his nonteaching time “to elevating seismology from a geological pastime into a modern (instrument-based) science.” Another was Thomas Gray, a Scotsman who taught telegraph engineering in Tokyo.
label: Description
content: Working together, Gray and Milne designed a seismograph that recorded the time, duration, and several components of earthquakes. With funds from the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a seismograph of this sort was made by James White, an instrument maker in Glasgow. This was shown to the Emperor in Japan, and installed in the Meteorological Department in Tokyo. And, according to Milne, its “successful working” led the Japanese Meteorological Department “to have a number of somewhat similar, but less expensive, instruments constructed.”
label: Description
content: This example is marked “Kyo iku-Hin-Seizo Kwaisha (Educational Article Mfg. Company) Tokyo, Japan.” The Imperial Japanese Commission to the World’s Columbian Exposition brought it to Chicago in 1893 and gave it to Smithsonian the following year.
label: Description
content: Ref: Thomas Gray, “On Gray and Milne’s Seismographic Apparatus,” <i>Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society</i> 39 (1883): 218-223, with illus.
label: Description
content: John Milne, “Sixth Report of the Committee . . . Appointed for the Purpose of Investigating the Volcanic Phenomena of Japan,” <i>Report of the Fifty-Sixth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Birmingham in September 1886</i>, p. 413.
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: Description
content: Gregory Clancy, <i>Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868-1930</i> (Berkeley, 2006).
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: 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.314580
label: catalog number
content: 314580
label: accession number
content: 205890
objectType: label: Object Name
content: seismograph
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 17 in x 30 1/2 in x 25 in; 43.18 cm x 77.47 cm x 63.5 cm