Wiechert Horizontal Seismograph
date: label: date made
content: 1915
name: label: maker
content: Spindler & Hoyer
notes: label: Description
content: Finding traces of an 1889 Tokyo earthquake on his seismograph in Karlsruhe, Germany, the physicist Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz realized that instruments had become sufficiently powerful that seismologists need no longer confine their work to regions where the earth shook beneath them. Rebeur-Paschwitz then proposed the establishment of a worldwide seismic network. The International Seismology Association was formed in 1904 and, in 1906, offered a prize for the best inexpensive seismograph. It was in this context that Spindler & Hoyer, an instrument firm in Göttingen, introduced smaller and less costly versions of the horizontal and vertical seismographs designed Emil Wiechert, professor of geophysics at the University of Göttingen.
label: Description
content: Frederick Oldenbach, S.J., a professor at Saint Ignatius College in Cleveland, O., had long been interested in meteorology and seismology. In 1909 he circulated a proposal for a network of Jesuit seismological stations that, in the words of one historian, would obtain “widespread publicity and general acclaim in a culture that celebrated science.” Each of these stations—15 in the United States and one in Canada—would have a pair of 80-kilogram Wiechert seismographs made by Spindler & Hoyer. Georgetown University, the oldest and most renowned Jesuit college in the country, got its first seismographs later that year and put them in the hands of Francis Anthony Tondorf, S.J., a physicist who had received some graduate training at The Johns Hopkins University.
label: Description
content: Father Tondorf was wonderfully energetic and charismatic and, over the course of the next 18 years, convinced wealthy alumni to provide funds for several more instruments. Among these was a second Wiechert-type horizontal seismograph made by Spindler & Hoyer that, with a 200-kilogram weight, was substantially larger and more stable than the earlier one. As before, however, registration occurred on a smoked paper mounted on a rotating aluminum cylinder. This is that instrument. It was at Georgetown by 1915 and it came to the Smithsonian in 1965.
label: Description
content: Ref: <i>Communications Concerning a New Horizontal and Vertical Seismograph after Prof. Dr. Wiechert</i> (Gottingen: Spindler & Hoyer, 1908); this includes German and French editions of the text.
label: Description
content: “Seismographs of Washington,” <i>Modern Mechanics</i> (1915): 297-299.
label: Description
content: Johannes Schweitzer, “Early German Contributions to Modern Seismology.” http://www.dgg-online.de/geschichte/johannes/CH 79-24CDpartA.pdf
label: Description
content: Carl-Henry Geschwind, “Embracing Science and Research: Early Twentieth-Century Jesuits and Seismology in the United States,” <i>Isis</i> 89 (1998): 27-49.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (charts stored MAH, 5120, S-67-C)
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Lower Saxony, Göttingen
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
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Georgetown University
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.326987
label: accession number
content: 265135
label: catalog number
content: 326987
objectType: label: Object Name
content: seismograph