Seismic wave monitoring provides breathing space

In 1868, the year a magnitude 7 earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area, J.D. Copper, a physician, gave the first description of an early warning system in an editorial for a local newspaper. Copper believed the public could be given advanced warning by the use of seismic waves.

"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 Earth high enough to do damage will start an electric current over 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," he wrote.

Almost a century later, in 1965, engineers for Japan Railways Group decided to install seismometers on the routes used by their newly designed bullet trains to warn drivers to brake and slow their trains to avoid being derailed. It was the first time an early warning system had been used anywhere in the world.