Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/103

Rh In my immediate vicinity the destructive effects were trivial, and I did not learn until two hours later that a great disaster had been wrought on the opposite side of the bay and that San Francisco was in flames. This information at once incited a tour of observation, and thus began, so far as I was personally concerned, the investigation of the earthquake. A similar beginning was doubtless made by every other geologist in the state, and the initial work of observation and record was individual and without concert. But organization soon followed, and by the end of the second day it is probable that twenty men were working in cooperation under the leadership of Professor J. C. Branner, of Stanford University, and Professor A. C. Lawson, of the State University at Berkeley. At that time and for several succeeding days the ordinary means of communication were so paralyzed or overburdened that no messages passed between these two centers of organization; but as the needs of the hour were patent to all, the work was not prejudiced by the lack of intercommunication.

On the third day after the shock Governor Pardee appointed a State Earthquake Investigation Commission, naming as its chairman the head of the geological department of the State University, Professor Lawson, and including in its membership Professor Branner, of the Stanford University, Professors Davidson and Leuschner, of the State University, Professor Campbell, of the Lick Observatory, Mr. Burckhalter, of the Chabot Observatory, Professor Reid, of Johns Hopkins University and Mr. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey. The commission held its first meeting three days later, when the scope of its work was considered and defined, provision was made for circulars soliciting information, an announcement was prepared for the purpose of relieving certain groundless fears entertained by a portion of the community, and two committees were appointed for the general work of observation. To the first committee, with Professor Lawson as chairman, was assigned the determination and study of surface changes associated with the earthquake and the collection of data as to intensity, so that isoseismals, or curves of equal intensity, might be drawn upon the map. To the second committee, with Professor Leuschner as chairman, was assigned the collection of data for the drawing of coseismals, or lines connecting points on the earth's surface reached by the shock at the same instant. Some weeks afterward, when the main features of the earthquake had become known, a third committee was appointed, with Professor Reid as chairman, to consider the relations of the earthquake phenomena to certain problems in geophysics, or the science of the inner earth.

The work of these three committees is still in progress, and will not be completed for several months. The actual drawing of isoseismals and coseismals can not be performed until a large body of