My experiments with volcanoesJaggar, Thomas Augustus
Science
My experiments with volcanoes
Jaggar, Thomas Augustus
Geologists -- Biography; Volcanoes
I put Finch in charge of Aleutian Islands seismographs, as well as
the one he was to establish at Mineral. With Wilson as seismologist
and instrument designer in Hawaii, we started constructing horizontal
pendulums, like those used in Hawaii, making the weights out of
large iron pipes, to be filled with sand at the place of operation.
These were two-component seismographs, recording on a single
chronograph drum. We sent one to the Coast Survey station at Sitka
and built two more for Kodiak and Unalaska. Finch built and set up
his own seismograph at Mineral. He started systematic surveys of the
temperatures of hot springs and steam jets in different parts of
Lassen Park and kept close contact with the Geological Department of
the University of California at Berkeley. Lassen was the subject of
geological surveys by Anderson and Finch, and later the park area was
studied by Howel Williams.
I went to Washington to see government authorities, particularly
Professor Charles F. Marvin, Chief of the Weather Bureau, and Dr. G.
O. Smith, Director of the Geological Survey. I can never express my
indebtedness to Marvin, a good designer who built an inverted pendulum
seismograph in Washington. Finch had worked with Marvin when he was
weather observer in airplanes based on Ireland during the first World
War. Hence methods of government contact and reports, in the early days
of our Observatory, were kindly guided by Marvin. The Weather Bureau
was a place of self-recording instruments, something new for geology,
and much needed for volcano observation. For weather is a matter of
present changes, whereas geology had long been a matter of ancient
specimens.
Director Smith was instrumental in calling a meeting in Washington,
of scientists of all bureaus interested in the Aleutian Islands. I
was selected to lead the symposium, which included representatives
of climatology, biology and fisheries, geology and geochemistry,
oceanography and geodesy, hydrographic charting, gravity, and
magnetism. There proved to be great interest in the Alaskan Peninsula
and the islands, and the Survey published a special bulletin on the
symposium.
W. C. Mendenhall, who had written a monograph on the volcano of Mount
Wrangell in the great bend of the continent around the Gulf of Alaska,
became director of the Geological Survey and one of my best friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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