筆記
1868年 Copper提出的地震預警的構想

San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of 3rd November 1868
Earthquake Indicator
EDITOR BULLETIN.

Since the Japanese magnet indicator has proved a failure, we are now obliged to look for some other means of prognosticating these fearful convulsions, and I wish to suggest the following mode by which we may make electricity the means, perhaps, of saving thousands of lives in case of the ccurrence of more severe shocks than we have yet experienced. It is well known that these shocks are produced by a wavemotion of the surface of the earth, the waves radiating from a center just as they do in water when a stone is thrown in. If this center happens to be far enough from this city, we may be easily notified of the coming wave in time for all to escape from dangerous buildings before it reaches us. The rate of velocity, as observed and recorded in Dr. J. B. Trask’s work on Earthquakes in California from 1800 to 1864, is 61.5 (six and one fifth) miles per minute, or a little less per hour (40 miles) than the tidal wave is reported to have traveled across the ocean to this port from the Sandwich Islands or Japan. A very simple mechanical contrivance can be arranged at various points from 10 to 100 miles from San Francisco, by which a wave of the earh high enough to do damage, will start an electric current over the wires now radiating from this city, and almost instantaneously ring an alarm bell, which should be hung in a high tower near the center of the city. This bell should be very large, of peculiar sound, and known to everybody as the earthquake bell. Of course nothing but the distant undulation of the surface of the earth should ring it. This machinery would be self-acting, and not dependent on the telegraph operators, who might not always retain presence of mind enough to telegraph at the moment, or might sound the alarm too often. As some shocks appear to come from the west, a cable might be laid to the Farallone Islands, 25 miles distant, and warnings thus given of any danger from that direction. Of course there might be shocks, the central force of which was too near this city to be thus protected, but that is not likely to occur once in a hundred times.
J.D. COOPER, M.D.