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Horizontal pendulum development and the legacy of Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz

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Abstract

Horizontal pendulum development was paramount in the birth of modern instrumental seismology and solid-earth tide study. This paper presents a revised history starting in the first part of the nineteenth century and culminating with Rebeur-Paschwitz’s masterpiece in its latter part. The first stage began with the invention of the horizontal pendulum by Lorenz Hengler in 1832. He was followed by several, mostly independent, inventors during the three decades from the 1850s to the 1870s, in particular Friedrich Zöllner in 1869–1872 who popularized this instrument. With the exception of an instrument designed by Alexander Gerard in 1851, all these preliminary pendulums were suspended with two wires. Slightly different forms of horizontal pendulums were invented in Japan by James Ewing and Thomas Gray in the early 1880s, based on bracket or conical suspensions. The merit of demonstrating the outstanding potential of high-sensitivity horizontal pendulums completely relies on the work of Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz between 1886 and 1895. He successively developed three models of pendulums, in collaboration with three different manufacturers: the Fecker pendulum in 1886, the Repsold pendulum in 1888, from which six copies were produced, and finally, the Stückrath two-component model in 1894, built in three copies. Based on the scrutiny of a large number of previously unexploited archives, the detailed chronology of Rebeur-Paschwitz’s achievements is presented. Archive, and in situ explorations allowed us to discover five out of the six original copies of the first Rebeur-Paschwitz’s Repsold pendulum previously unknown or thought to be lost.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this paper, we will use the word “period”, rather than other confusing or ambiguous terms such as swing, oscillation, or beat, which were in use in several languages during the previous centuries, usually corresponding to half-periods.

  2. The new moon occurred precisely on 14 March 1831 at 05 h59 UTC, i.e. 06 h45 Munich Mean Time.

  3. We avoid using the name garden-gate suspension which is used by several authors as a synonym for bracket suspension (e.g. Wielandt 2002), while others use it for conical pendulums (e.g. Aki and Richards 1980).

  4. This note is not included in the International Handbook of Earthquake and Engineering Seismology (W. H. K. Lee et al., eds.).

  5. This was based more on commercial than on technical ground, since Repsold manufactured later in 1896 a two-component pendulum for Omori in Japan.

  6. Some Jena letters are analysed in Cremer (2001).

  7. Note that the system gain 230 computed by Abe (1994) p 419 for Nikolayev is erroneous because Abe used the half-period instead of the period (see Kortazzi 1895, p 28).

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Acknowledgments

We wish to warmly thank the following persons for their support and assistance during this study (in alphabetical order of towns): Holger Mandel (Heidelberg), Hermann Mälzer, Norbert Rösch (Karlsruhe), Peter Fedorov (Kharkov), Johannes Schweitzer (Kjeller), Josep Batlló (Lisbon), Françoise Le Guet Tully, Luc Poirier (Nice), Gennadiy Pinigin, Anatoliy Ivantsov, Aleksandr Mazhaev, Grigoriy Petrov (Nikolayev), Michel Cara, André Heck, Magali Pierrat, Alain Steyer, Matthias Zillmer (Strasbourg), and Olga Heinloo (Tartu). We are grateful to the archive depots and libraries visited for granting access to their documents.

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  1. Institut de Physique du Globe de Strasbourg, Strasbourg University/EOST, CNRS, 5 rue René Descartes, 67084, Strasbourg, France

    Julien Fréchet & Luis Rivera

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  1. Julien Fréchet
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Correspondence to Julien Fréchet.

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Archive sources

Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Adolf und Georg Repsold collection 1803–1919, call number 621–1 Repsold.

TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Universitätsbibliothek “Georgius Agricola”, Nachlaß Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz, call number NL 108.

Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Universitätsarchiv, Rebeur-Paschwitz files, call numbers UAH Rep. 21 III Nr. 139 and UAH PA 12850 Rebeur-Paschwitz.

Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena, Universitätsarchiv, Nachlaß Georg K. C. Gerland.

Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Universitätsarchiv, Nachlaß Georg Gerland, call number 209/30 to 209/146.

Archive depots of the Astronomical Observatories in Kharkov, Nice, and Nikolayev.

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Fréchet, J., Rivera, L. Horizontal pendulum development and the legacy of Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz. J Seismol 16, 315–343 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-011-9272-5

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