Abstract
THE REVIEWER M. FOUQUÉ's letter (NATURE, March 28, p. 510) does not meet the main points of my criticism of his book. He thinks that a pendulum swinging in synchronism with the ground's motion is the right thing to use as an absolute seismometer. M. Poincare's mathematical note, to which he refers as supporting his view, does not support it, but shows why such a pendulum is unsuitable. It is necessary to emphasize this, for it relates to a fundamental matter in the dynamics of earthquake measurement—a matter on which the work done of late years in Japan seems to me to be so intimately based that a misunderstanding about it must be fatal to a proper appreciation of that work. And, in point of fact, I did not find that M. Fouqué gave an appreciative account of what any of the Japanese observers had done. As to his mention of Prof. Ewing's seismograph, in particular, I criticized it not so much because it was meagre as because it was incorrect,—so incorrect as to justify the inference that the author was not acquainted with that instrument.
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“Les Tremblements de Terre” . Nature 39, 583 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/039583a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/039583a0
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