There were two articles in Amateur Scientist column of the 
"Scientific American" that mention Elmer Rixon and his
water-well seismograph.
   June, 1953 - page 117 - has about a page of text
           text and a large diagram
   May, 1961 - page 182 - almost two pages starting
           discussing Elmer Rixon's work, and continuing
           mentioning Gerald I. Shea's work, with
           more diagrams and recordings

If you are interested, and cannot get microfilm type
images from your local library, I can scan and send
the articles to you.

Reference to the above articles is in the web site
for Society for Amateur Scientists at
http://web2.thesphere.com/SAS/WebX.cgi?13@................
under "Seisograph".

The Society for Amateur Scientists has obtained rights
to make a CD of all Amateur Scientist columns of the 
"Scientific American".  You can check for the progress at
http://web2.thesphere.com/SAS/WebX.cgi?13@...................

Elmer Rixon and Gerald Shea were early founders of the 
World Amateur Seismological Society (WASS) that 
published a quarterly newsletter/journal during
the 1960's to 1975.


Ed Thelen - 

"SMITH ROBERT L." wrote:

> Background --
> 
> My mothers sister married late in life to a very interesting
> gentleman by the name of Mr. Elmer Rexin.  He was the plant
> engineer at the Nunn-Bush shoe company in Milwaukee,
> Wisconsin for most of his adult life.  Somewhere back in the
> '50's
> or thereabouts, the USGS was conducting water table surveys
> of deep wells in the area and placed a float and drum
> recorder in one of the deep wells in the Nunn-Bush factory.
> During the period of recording Uncle Elmer noticed that
> certain anomalous squiggles on their recordings corresponded
> to major seismic events that had made the news at the time.
> After the USGS packed up their equipment and left, 

> The work has been written up in various journals,
> unfortunately I cannot remember any of the references.
> Somewhere at my family home in Illinois there are dozens of
> rolls of paper with pen squiggles on them marking various
> events over the years.  They were salvaged by my family
> after my Aunt and Uncle passed away in the '80's.
> 
> *****************************************************
> 
> I am making this posting in hopes that someone here on this
> public network may
> know of this work and can point me to any of the reports
> that were published in
> the past.
> 
>         Many thanks and good squiggles to all,  Bob Smith
>
__________________________________________________________

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