Earthquakes and Other Earth Movements is a brief scientific textbook about the causes and effects of earthquakes. Contents: "Relationship of man to nature—The aspect of a country is dependent on geological phenomena—Earthquakes an important geological phenomenon—Relationship of seismology to the sciences and arts—Earth movements other than earthquakes—Seismological literature—(Writings of Perrey, Mallet, Eastern writings, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' the Bible, Herodotus, Pliny, Hopkins, Von Hoff, Humboldt, Schmidt, Seebach, Lasaulx, Fuchs, Palmieri, Bertelli, Seismological Society of Japan)—Seismological terminology..."

Reproduction of the original.

The destructive force of earthquakes has stimulated human inquiry since ancient times, yet the scientific study of earthquakes is a surprisingly recent endeavor. Instrumental recordings of earthquakes were not made until the second half of the 19th century, and the primary mechanism for generating seismic waves was not identified until the beginning of the 20th century. From this recent start, a range of laboratory, field, and theoretical investigations have developed into a vigorous new discipline: the science of earthquakes. As a basic science, it provides a comprehensive understanding of earthquake behavior and related phenomena in the Earth and other terrestrial planets. As an applied science, it provides a knowledge base of great practical value for a global society whose infrastructure is built on the Earth's active crust. This book describes the growth and origins of earthquake science and identifies research and data collection efforts that will strengthen the scientific and social contributions of this exciting new discipline.

The seeds of this conference were sown with the publication by Press, in 1965, of a paper in which he suggested that the displacement field due to a major earthquake may extend over much greater distances than had been thought possible before. Later on, Mansinha and Smylie pointed out that if Press was correct then, since the redistri bution of significant quantities of mass was involved, the inertia tensor of the earth would be altered and thus cause the earth to wobble; this revived the idea that earth quakes might be the long sought source for maintaining the Chandler Wobble. They argued that since earthquakes are sudden events it should be worthwhile trying to determine if there was any correlation between sudden changes in the Chandler term of the pole path and major earthquakes. Furthermore, since displacements occur both before and after an earthquake it might be possible to obtain a few days warning of a major earthquake by making instantaneous observations of the pole path. Analysis of the data indicated some correlation but, as often happens in science in general and in geophysics in particular, the results were not conclusive because of imperfect theory and the need for more accurate determinations of the pole position. It soon became clear that a meeting between geophysicists and astronomers involved in this type of work would be of mutual benefit.