John Milne
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John Milne (1850 – 31 July 1913[1]) was the British geologist and mining engineer who invented the seismograph. He was born in Liverpool and raised in Rochdale and Milnrow in Lancashire, England, before moving to Japan.[2]
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[edit] Japan (1875-1895)
Milne was a professor of mining and geology at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo (from 1886 the Faculty of Engineering of the Imperial University) from March 8, 1876 until June 20, 1895. At the ICE he worked under Henry Dyer and with William Edward Ayrton and John Perry.
In 1880, Sir James Alfred Ewing, Thomas Gray and John Milne, all British scientists working in Japan, began to study earthquakes. They founded the Seismological Society of Japan and the society funded the invention of seismographs to detect and measure earthquakes. All three men worked as a team on the invention and use of seismographs. John Milne is generally credited with the invention of the horizontal pendulum seismograph in 1880.
[edit] Contributions to Anthropology
In 1882 John Milne was also contributing to the world of anthropology. He helped develop theories on where the Ainu of Japan came from, and what kind of race made up the prehistoric people of Japan in general. According to one theory, the prehistoric man was the Ainu plus an uncertain and perhaps variable element. After having actually excavated for several years in the Oomori shell-mound, John Milne introduced the conception of a Koropok-guru race. Koropok-guru came from an Ainu word meaning “the man under the rhubarb,” i.e. a small person. The Ainu legend concerning the existence of such a people seems to have been first reported by Milne. Early theories connected with this concept of small people who lived in Japan were that they could be racially linked with the Inuit. However, Milne believed that only in Hokkaido were the prehistoric sites due to the Koropok-guru. For northeastern Japan proper, he subscribed to the tradition which assigned prehistoric sites to the Ainu, who lived in pits and made stone implements and pottery. The inhabitants of Chishima (Kurile Islands), Karafuto (Sakhalin), and southern Kamchatka were a different race, though possibly offspring of the Koropok-guru. He anticipated the work of later scientists who in the actual material recovered recognize different prehistoric cultures for Hokkaidō and northeastern Japan. [3]
[edit] England (1895-1913)
In June 1895 he returned with his Japanese wife to England and settled at Shide Hill House, Shide, on the Isle of Wight, continuing his seismographic studies. He was made a professor emeritus of Tokyo Imperial University.
There he set up a seismological observatory. The Milne horizontal pendulum seismograph (later developed by J.J. Shaw into a much more sensitive instrument, the Milne-Shaw seismograph) was installed at a number of stations and institutions, especially in the British Empire; these stations sent their 'station registers' to ,Milne, and the registers where the basis of Milne's researches.
The need for international exchange of readings was soon recognized by Professor John Milne in his annual "Shide Circular Reports on earthquakes" published from 1900 to 1912. This work was destined to develop in the International Seismological Summary being set up immediately after the First World War.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- L.K. Herbert-Gustar and P.A. Nott published a biography of Milne John Milne, Father of Modern Seismology in 1980 ISBN 0-904404-34-X
- Paul Kabrna "John Milne - the man who mapped the shaking earth" ISBN 978-0-9555289-0-3 Published by Craven & Pendle Geological Society in March 2007.
- Nishioka, Hideo; W. Egbert Schenck. An Outline of Theories concerning the Prehistoric People of Japan. American Anthropologist © 1937 American Anthropological Association
- Robert Stonely. The History of the International Seismological Summary, Geophysical Journal Research (1970), 20, 343-349
