Foreword

The Working group “History of Seismometry” of the European Seismological Commission, in collaboration with the European Center for Geodynamics and Seismology (ECGS) organized a first Workshop Historical seismic instruments and documents: a heritage of great scientific and cultural value in Walferdange, Luxembourg, on May 16-18, 1994. This volume collects the Proceedings of this Workshop.

The Workshop’s programme was aimed at opening a debate on the different aspects of the exploitation of the scientific and cultural value of European seismological tradition.

The first goal was to outline the cultural and scientific reference framework and to settle the future initiatives for the recovery and exploitation of observatories, characters, instruments and data of European seismology. A great effort was made to outline a first draft of the present condition of historical instruments, observatories and seismic recordings.

Some aspects related to the safeguard, spread and processing of historical instrumental seismic data have also been discussed. Finally, an unusual aspect has been examined: the non-seismographic historical instrumental seismic data. In other words, all instrumental, often incidental, observations, related to the seismic motion and every phenomena that precede, accompany and follow earthquakes.

The programme, apparently ambitious, was not meant to answer every question; however, it was aimed at establishing a common ground among seismologists and historians of science and scientific instruments.

The results of the workshop, partly arranged in these proceedings, are a starting point for further thematic and methodological investigations.

I would like to thank all participants (30 from 14 countries) for giving their contribution to the development of a real multidisciplinary confrontation on the themes of the Workshop. I would also like to thank anybody who makes efforts in the recovery and safeguard of the historical and scientific heritage of European seismology. Many of them devote part of their time to this task, laboriously sparing it from their everyday research activities in different fields of seismology.

I also acknowledge the support of the Commission of European Community, and I am grateful to the Scientific Council of ECGS for supporting the organization of the WS and the publication of these proceedings. I am grateful to Prof. Paul Melchior for reading this entire volume, for his support, for his precious suggestions.

I also thank the Local Organizing Committee and in particular Mrs. Julie Jean and Prof. Bernard Ducarme.