The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to RichterEarthquakes have taught us much about our planet’s hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories—stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement. In The Earthquake Observers, Deborah R. Coen acquaints readers not only with the century’s most eloquent seismic commentators, including Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Karl Kraus, Ernst Mach, John Muir, and William James, but also with countless other citizen-observers, many of whom were women. Coen explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences. Seismology abandoned this project of citizen science with the introduction of the Richter Scale in the 1930s, only to revive it in the twenty-first century in the face of new hazards and uncertainties. The Earthquake Observers tells the history of this interrupted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
Comrie Scotland 17881897 | 25 |
Three News of the Apocalypse | 45 |
Switzerland 18551912 | 69 |
Five Geographies of Hazard | 103 |
Six The Moment of Danger | 125 |
Imperial Austria 18801914 | 141 |
California 18531906 | 187 |
California 19061935 | 215 |
Conclusion | 267 |
Acknowledgments | 279 |
Notes | 281 |
| 315 | |
| 345 | |
Eight What Is the Earth? | 163 |
Other editions - View all
The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter Deborah R. Coen Limited preview - 2013 |
The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter Deborah R. Coen No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
Albert Heim Belar box-folder Branner California California Earthquakes catalog catastrophe century citizen science colleagues collected commission’s Comrie damage Darwin davison disaster earth Earthquake Commission earthquake observers earthquake reports Eduard Suess effects engineering environmental Erdbeben european evidence experience Falb fear felt reports Forel geography geological geologist geophysical gerland Geschwind global ground Heim Hoernes Holden Humboldt imperial instruments Intensity Scales investigation Kant’s Karl Kraus knowledge Kraus Laibach macroseismic Mallet measure Milne Milne’s modern Montessus de Ballore mountains movement natural Neue Freie Presse newspaper nineteenth noted observatory ofthe phenomena physical psychic quake questionnaires Quoted record region Richter rockwood rockwood Papers Rossi-Forel scale San Francisco Schardt scientific scientists seemed seis seismic hazard seismic intensity seismic waves seismograph seismology seismometer sense shaking shock Society Swiss Earthquake tectonic theory tion Tremblements de terre tremors Visp Volger Wähner waves Wood to Byerly Wood’s Yakutat Bay Zagreb
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter |
| Author | Deborah R. Coen |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press, 2012 |
| ISBN | 0226111830, 9780226111834 |
| Length | 368 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Europe / General History / General History / United States / 19th Century History / United States / 20th Century Science / Earth Sciences / Seismology & Volcanism Science / History |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |