1850-1913

English geologist who invented the first modern seismograph in 1880. Born and educated in England, Milne lived for 20 years in Japan where he invented the seismograph for measuring the arrival time and magnitude of waves traveling through the ground from earthquakes. Seismographs today are an indispensable tool used to better understand not only earthquakes, but the structure of the entire earth, as they show how seismic waves are changed by the various materials they pass through in the earth's interior.