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Developed in 1935 by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg , both of the California Institute Of Technology , the scale was originally intended to be used only in a particular study area in California, and on seismograms recorded on a particular instrument, the Wood-Anderson torsion Seismometer . Richter originally reported values to the nearest quarter of a unit, but decimal numbers were used later. His motivation for creating the local magnitude scale was to separate the vastly larger number of smaller earthquakes from the few larger earthquakes observed in California at the time. His inspiration for the technique was the Stellar Magnitude Scale used in astronomy to describe the brightness of stars and other celestial objects. Richter arbitrarily chose a magnitude 0 event to be an earthquake that would show a maximum combined horizontal displacement of 1 micrometre on a seismogram recorded using a Wood-Anderson torsion seismometer 100 km from the earthquake epicenter. This choice was intended to prevent negative magnitudes from being assigned. However, the Richter scale has no upper or lower limit, and sensitive modern Seismograph s now routinely record quakes with negative magnitudes. Because of the limitations of the Wood-Anderson torsion seismometer used to develop the scale, the original ''M''L cannot be calculated for events larger than about 6.8. Many investigators have proposed extensions to the local magnitude scale, the most popular being the Surface Wave magnitude ''M''S and the Body Wave magnitude ''M''b. PROBLEMS WITH THE RICHTER SCALE The major problem with Richter magnitude is that it is not easily related to physical characteristics of the earthquake source. Furthermore, there is a saturation effect near 8.3-8.5, owing to the Scaling Law Of Earthquake Spectra , that causes traditional magnitude methods (such as ''M''S) to yield the same magnitude estimate for events that are clearly of different size. By the beginning of the 21st Century , most seismologists considered the traditional magnitude scales to be largely obsolete, being replaced by a more physically meaningful measurement called the Seismic Moment which is more directly relatable to the physical parameters, such as the dimension of the Earthquake Rupture , and the energy released from the earthquake. In 1979 seismologists Tom Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori , also of the California Institute Of Technology , proposed the Moment Magnitude Scale (''M''W), which provides a way of expressing seismic moments in a form that can be approximately related to traditional seismic magnitude measurements. ''Magnitude'' must not be confused with ''intensity''. Intensity scales, such as the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale , the European Macroseismic Scale , the Shindo Scale , and the Medvedev-Sponheuer-Karnik Scale , are semi-quantitative linear scales. They are used to describe relative earthquake effects. The Richter magnitude scale is a quantitative logarithmic scale which is a tool for measuring and comparing earthquake sizes. RICHTER MAGNITUDES Events with magnitudes of about 4.5 or greater are strong enough to be recorded by seismographs all over the world. The following describes the typical effects of earthquakes of various magnitudes near the epicenter. This table should be taken with extreme caution, since intensity and thus ground effects depend not only on the magnitude, but also on the distance to the epicenter, and geological conditions (certain terrains can amplify seismic signals).
(''Adapted from U.S. Geological Survey documents.'') Great earthquakes occur once a year, on average. The largest recorded earthquake was Great Chilean Earthquake of May 22 , 1960 which had a magnitude (MW) of 9.5 ( Chile 1960 ). The following table lists the approximate Energy equivalents in terms of TNT explosive force.
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