PRAKLA-SEISMOS Downlodportal – THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING

THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING
PART THREE - 700 YEARS OF EARTH SCINCE

Chapter 5 - Prior to the Year 1840

1269	Petrus Peregrinus wrote the first treatise on the compass, a geophysical instrument, giving a deseription of an azimuth and a graduated circle of 360 degrees.
1501	At Florence, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci occupied himself principally with physical geography and engineering problems. He wrote about the tides in the Euxine and Caspian Seas, and on the mechanies and dangers inherent in earth slippage along a nearby fault line. At about the same period of his life he discovered sea shell fossils in the Alps and correctly surmised that those mountains had once been beneath the ocean.
1519	Ferdinand Magellan left Seville, with 35 compasses on his voyage to circumnavigate the globe.
1549	At the siege of Exeter, England, the first seismoscopes were used, consisting of pans of water, placed so as to deteet the labors of enemy soldiers in digging underground tunnels.
1580	William Gilbert called the earth a gigantic magnet.
1589	GaIiIei Galileo established the first principles of dynamies, incIuding the law of free fall and of pendular motion. The CGS unit of gravity is called a "Gal" in honor of Galileo.
1666	Sir Isaac Newton matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1661. Four years later, when the Great Plague spread from London to Cambridge, the University closed its doors and dismissed its students until it was safe to reopen in 1667. In 1666, Newton, who had retired to his mother's farm in Lineolnshire, discovered the laws of gravitational attraetion and the laws of motion. Newton's mother may or may not have had an apple orchard on her farm. Newton said, “I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon. Having thereby compared the force requisite to keep the moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the Earth and found them to answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two years 1665 and 1666 for in those years I was in the prime of my life.“ Newton was twenty three years old. In 1665 he established the system of differential calculus and in 1666 wrote on integral calculus. In 1666 he started his epie study of the theory of light and colors. Shortly after Newton became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College in 1669, he announeed that the variation in pendulum oscillation rates was due to the fact that the Earth is not a true sphere.
1669	Nicolaus Steno published a massive book on fossils.
1672	Richer reported variations in gravity over the surfaee of the Earth from pendulum clock rate variations.
1673	Christian Huygens published his book on pendulum motion.
1735	Pierre Bouguer while on a French expedition to Peru, used the pendulum to indicate gravity anomalies.
1740	Pierre Bouguer made the first attempt to evaluate the denensity of the Earth.
1750	John Michell published “A Treatise of Artificial Magnets.“ If Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) is the father of geology and Everette De Golyer (1886-1956) is the father of geophysics, then John Michell must be the grandfather of both geology and geophyics John Michell (1724-1793) was educated at Queens College, Cambridge. This treatise on magnetism explained the nature of magnetic induction.
1760	John Michell published "Cause and Observations upon the Phenomena of Earthquakes" and became the founder of the science of seismology.
1762	John Michell was appointed the third holder of the Woodwardian professorship of geology at Cambridge University. His earthquake papers of which the one published in 1760 was only the first of a series, contained lucid descriptions of mountain building. His ideal section of mountain structure consisted of a central core of crystalline rocks flanked by steeply tilted strata, which were overlain by slightly tilted younger beds. Michell's ideas of stratigraphy and structural geology were comprehensive and refreshingly modern. His description of the mechanics of stratification, including structural folding and faulting give Michell a high place in the science of geology.
1774	Nevil Maskelyne and Charles Hutton measurecl the gravitational attraction of Mt. Schiehallien in Perthshire, Scotland.
1777	John Michell invented the first torsion balance.
1785	James Hutton, Scottish geologist and Doctor of Medicine, published "Theory of the Earth." He stated that natural laws and only natural laws govern and form a rational system of geology.
1786	Charles Augustin de Coulomb designed a second torsion balance.
1787	Abraham Gottlob Werner published his treatise on general geology.
1797	Henry Cavendish, educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge University, used the John Michell torsion balance to determine the specific gravity of the earth, which he published as 5.48.
1802	Benjamin Silliman was appointed head of the Science Department at Yale University. For half a century, Silliman lectured in chemistry, mineralogy and geology. He was popular and highly successful both as a teacher and as a platform lecturer. He developed the Sheffield Scientific School as the best known College in Yale University, destined to turn out most of the eminent American scientists of the nineteenth century.
1807	The Geological Society of London was founded.
1808	John Dalton published “A New System of Chemical Philosophy“ which established the atomic theory as fundamental to chemical and physical science.
1811	Baron Curier and Alexandre Brongniart published on the geology of the Paris Basin. They mapped the outcrops, identified the fossils and drew geologie cross sections.
1815	William Smith printed the first stratigraphie map of England. He became known as the father of stratigraphy and of geologie maps.
1818	Adam Sedgwick became Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University. He it was who devised the name of Cambrian to designate the oldest group of fossiliferous strata. He was the first to use the term Devonian as an intermediate type between the Silurian and the Carboniferous systems. The Sedgwick Geological Museum, built as a memorial to him, was opened at Cambridge in 1903.
1824	North Carolina started its geological survey with Denison Olmstead, a Yale graduate, as head geologist.
1825	In Sweden use was made of a "mining compass" in magnetic prospecting for ores. This might weIl have been the first geophysical survey engaged in for economic considerations.
1830	The Massachusetts Geological Survey was organized under Yale geologist, Edward Hitchcock, who later became President of Amherst College. The Geological Society of France was established.
1831	Tennessee organized a geological survey under Dutch geologist, Gerard Troost, who printed a geological map of Tennessee, the first such state map to be published.
1832	The Geological Society of Dublin was founded.
1833	Sir Charles Lyell published the third and last volume of his monumental treatise, "The Principles of Geology." This epocal work was to serve as the chief source of geologic education for many decades. It laid the foundation for petroleum geology.
1834	Maryland became the first state to coordinate a topographie survey and a geological survey under state geologist, J. T. Ducatel.
1835	Henry D. Rogers became the first state geologist for New Jersey and ~yilliam B. Rogers beeame the first state geologist for Virginia.
1836	New York organized a state geological survey with four experienced geologists and four young assistants. Maine and Pennsylvania also started geologieal surveys this same year.
1837	James D. Dana published his "System of Minerology.“ The state of Miehigan started its geologieal survey.
1838	In this year the United States Army organized The Topographical Engineers as an autonomous corps under Colonel John J. Albert. For the next twenty three years this unit operated with distinguished geologists, botanists, zoologists and explorers and carried on a score of hazardous faet-finding expeditions. John Charles Fremont was a second lieutenant in the Topographical Engineers. He made four transcontinental journies with far-reaching consequences, especially for Oregon and California. In California, Fremont helped to wrest the control of the territory from the Mexican government and turn it over to Ameriean rule. By the time the Topographical Engineers were ready to disband, Fremont had risen to the rank of Major General. Captain Randolph B. Marey explored the Red River. Captain Howard Stansbury explored the Great Salt Lake of Utah. Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives explored the Colorado River from the Gulf to the Grand Canyon. Accompanied by civilian geologists, naturalists and engineers, the Topographical Engineers surveyed all the potential routes for transcontinental railways between 1853 and 1856.
1839	Sir Roderisk Impey Murchison published "The Silurian System.“ Two American states organized their geological surveys, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.