Detecting, Recording and Expanding : Instrumentation of Earthquake and Tsunami Observations in Meiji Japan(<Special Issue>Historical Studies on Scientific and Pedagogical Instruments)

概要

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This paper describes the historical evolution of scientific instruments that detected and visualized earthquakes and tsunamis in Meiji Japan. In the early 1880s, some European scientists, who had been invited by the Japanese government, created seismographs which mechanized and abstracted the practices and visual representations of seismological investigations. By the next decade, it was also possible to mechanically record tsunami waves on tide gauges, the observation system that the state offered. Furthermore, around the turn of the twentieth century, the scope of seismological observations in Japan began to spread beyond its territory. With the help of instruments that could inscribe seismic waves originating from the opposite hemisphere, the scientific information produced by those devices could move beyond borders, thus, scientific instruments and human contexts co-evolved.
2011-03-31