Howrah: India’s first seismograph lies ‘buried’ at Shibpur campus
Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey | TNN | Updated: Mar 18, 2019, 05:46 IST
The institute building where the seismograph (right) was installed is now a canteen; the instrument was among ... Read MoreHOWRAH: India’s oldest seismograph lies “buried” inside an innocuous one-storey building, which now functions as a canteen at one of the country’s oldest engineering colleges — the Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Shibur.
The earthquake measuring instrument—an original Benioff seismograph-meter —was built by Victor Hugo Benioff, the father of earthquake design instruments. Installed in the 1930s at the ‘office of the institute’s engineer’, this instrument was among the first few built by Benioff and sent to the then Bengal Engineering College.
This building, which lay unused with its forgotten piece of history, made way for a canteen after the authorities decided to “utilise the space better”. A special floor has been added over the storage area of the defunct machine to keep it hidden from public eye.
A small door on the floor of the canteen takes you down a steep, rusted makeshift iron ladder to the seismometer. The 13-part machine lies there in a pitiable state, like a massive piece of junk. The machine was attached to a specially designed Nalder Brothers clock, which too lay defunct in the registrar’s office, till it was spotted by officials aware of its significance.
‘Not sure if machine can be repaired’
“The campus is old and it is natural that such treasures will be found if we look carefully in the nooks and crannies. We have initiated researches into our history and the importance of the Benioff machine has been brought to our notice by assistant registrar, Bibhor Das. We will try to bring the machine up and lodge it in a proper place,” said Biman Bandyopadhyay, registrar of IIEST.
“However, I am not sure if the machine can be repaired to run again, but we will definitely restore and showcase it as it is now, like we have decided in case of the Nalder Clock,” he added. Data related to the functioning of the Benioff machine have been retrieved by Das from old records.
A faculty member of the California Institute of Technology, Benioff had built his first batch of seismographs in 1932 to locate the deep sources of earthquakes. One of the first machines that he built was sent to the IIEST, then known as Bengal Engineering College, for constant earthquake monitoring across the globe to register shocks and their origins. The data was then compared with the daily readings collected at the California Institute of Technology to arrive at a greater precision as far as prediction was concerned.
This machine was part of the geophysical laboratory that was part of the mathematics department of the institute. Later, the laboratory gave way to the office of the institute’s engineer and the machine gradually became defunct. Today, most people have forgotten that it existed one day.
The earthquake measuring instrument—an original Benioff seismograph-meter —was built by Victor Hugo Benioff, the father of earthquake design instruments. Installed in the 1930s at the ‘office of the institute’s engineer’, this instrument was among the first few built by Benioff and sent to the then Bengal Engineering College.
This building, which lay unused with its forgotten piece of history, made way for a canteen after the authorities decided to “utilise the space better”. A special floor has been added over the storage area of the defunct machine to keep it hidden from public eye.
A small door on the floor of the canteen takes you down a steep, rusted makeshift iron ladder to the seismometer. The 13-part machine lies there in a pitiable state, like a massive piece of junk. The machine was attached to a specially designed Nalder Brothers clock, which too lay defunct in the registrar’s office, till it was spotted by officials aware of its significance.
‘Not sure if machine can be repaired’
“The campus is old and it is natural that such treasures will be found if we look carefully in the nooks and crannies. We have initiated researches into our history and the importance of the Benioff machine has been brought to our notice by assistant registrar, Bibhor Das. We will try to bring the machine up and lodge it in a proper place,” said Biman Bandyopadhyay, registrar of IIEST.
“However, I am not sure if the machine can be repaired to run again, but we will definitely restore and showcase it as it is now, like we have decided in case of the Nalder Clock,” he added. Data related to the functioning of the Benioff machine have been retrieved by Das from old records.
A faculty member of the California Institute of Technology, Benioff had built his first batch of seismographs in 1932 to locate the deep sources of earthquakes. One of the first machines that he built was sent to the IIEST, then known as Bengal Engineering College, for constant earthquake monitoring across the globe to register shocks and their origins. The data was then compared with the daily readings collected at the California Institute of Technology to arrive at a greater precision as far as prediction was concerned.
This machine was part of the geophysical laboratory that was part of the mathematics department of the institute. Later, the laboratory gave way to the office of the institute’s engineer and the machine gradually became defunct. Today, most people have forgotten that it existed one day.
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