Hi Roger,

Yes, I remember this discussion. I may have even saved it and will look for it. I'm not saying that you are wrong, but I don't think that I want to discount what Haroun wrote. To quote what he wrote:

"Reported for the first time in 1898 by John Milne before the Royal Society in London, the observation that, before every sufficiently powerful earthquake, a signal seems to affect the telluric currents -- the natural Earth currents which circulate throughout the ground--has since been repeatedly confirmed. And many seismologists, thereafter and in many different countries (India, Russia, China, the United States, Japan) tried to detect this precursor signal and use it to predict the place and date of the earthquake that it was theoretically foreshadowing. The effort was unfortunately in vain, and this approach to the problem was almost completely abandoned."

There is more but I'll leave it at that for now.

Its also interesting to note that Reuben Paschwitz is often credited with the seismograph invention that John Milne perfected. This prior to Richter coming onto the scene.

Dennis