I suggested that we might compare earthquakes in terms of the measured amplitudes recorded at these stations, with an appropriate correction for distance.
From Charles Francis Richter
In every area of the world where there is earthquake risk, there are still many buildings of this type; it is very frustrating to try to get rid of them.
My amateur interest in astronomy brought out the term 'magnitude', which is used for the brightness of a star.
Incidentally, the usual designation of the magnitude scale to my name does less than justice to the great part that Dr. Gutenberg played in extending the scale to apply to earthquakes in all parts of the world.
Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time.
I was lucky because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.
There is another common misapprehension that the magnitude scale is itself some kind of instrument or apparatus. Visitors will frequently ask to 'see the scale.'
We would have been happy if we could have assigned just three categories, large, medium, and small; the point is, we wanted to avoid personal judgments. It actually turned out to be quite a finely tuned scale.
What emerged, of course, was that the magnitude scale presupposed that all earthquakes were alike except for a constant scaling factor. And this proved to be closer to the truth than we expected.
I'm glad to see the press now referring to the open-ended Richter scale.
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