| This Week Inventor Archive Inventor Search Inventor of the Week Archive Browse for a different Invention or Inventor Seismograph Geologist and engineer John Milne is known as one of the most significant contributors to the understanding and evaluation of earthquakes, having compiled a substantial body of observational research, developed the first international network for seismological data, and created what may be considered the worldÂs first modern seismograph. Born on December 30, 1850 in Liverpool, England, Milne attended KingÂs College and the Royal School of Mines where he earned the credentials to become a mining engineer. He first began working in Europe, performing mineral investigations for mines there and later, in Newfoundland. He also participated in an 1874 mining expedition to Sinai. At the age of 25, he accepted a professorial post at the newly established Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo. He took an adventurous 11-month overland journey to get there, traveling across Siberia and arriving in Japan in 1876. An earthquake occurred there on his very first night. The study of earthquakes was relatively new then, having become a field of its own only in the mid-18th century, when a series of major quakes that hit England in 1750 was followed by a quake and tsunami in 1755 that devastated Lisbon, Portugal, killing nearly 70,000. At this time scientists began compiling observational data on quakes around the world, and as international communications improved, more and more information could be combined. | |
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