PSN-L Email List Message

Subject: Re: Peoples Seismograph Array ---> Public Seismic Network
From: Larry Cochrane lcochrane@..............
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:47:43 -0700


Hi Steve,

Thanks for the writeup on the PSN history. Below is what I sent Chris, with some 
editing, regarding my involvement with the PSN. I will go ahead and make a PSN 
history web page using the information from this thread.

I'm not very good at remembering dates, so all I can do is give you an approximation
on then things happened. When I got involved in the PSN it was already an established 
group. Edward Cranswick (USGS) and a few local San Jose people who worked at IBM 
started the PSN. Edward wrote the following
http://dominicapsn.freeyellow.com/PSN/PSN_History.html back in 1996 regarding the
PSN.

I got involved in seismology in the early 1990s. The Loma Prieta event got my
attention, so a few months or maybe a year afterwards, and since I always wanted to 
make a seismometer, I started to build my own. The first one was a long spring in a 
tube with a magnet at the end and a pickup coil on the ground. I soon discovered that 
I needed damping so I placed the coil and magnet in some oil. Since I had a hardware 
and software background I built my own ADC board and wrote my SDR program that ran 
under DOS. A few days after getting everything working I recorded my first local 
event. I think is was a M4 so it showed up very nicely on the screen. So I was hooked...

At the time I built my first system I did not know about the PSN. I happened to go to 
a lecture at the local USGS office where one of the seismologists told me about the 
PSN. At the time the PSN used dial-in bulletin boards to share files and
communicate and I attended a few local meetings. That lasted a few years and then the 
Internet started to get popular in the mid 1990s, so I created the first web site and 
started the mailing list and as they say the rest is history...

To add what I sent to Chris; The earliest file I can find on my web server is Sept. 
of 1995, so the Redwood City PSN web site must have gone online around then. The 
first PSN list message is dated 31 Dec. 1995.

Steve Hammond, do you remember the approximate start and end dates of your BBS 
system? Did you start it before or after the Loma Prieta event?

Regards,
Larry Cochrane
Redwood City, PSN


On 4/27/2012 1:17 PM, Stephen Hammond wrote:
> Hi Chris, Thanks for your note and all the references. As for the Lehman’s I
> currently have, I’m very unhappy with them and they are headed for scrap. When I was
> in San Jose I had 40CM booms and they worked very well and had 25-30 second periods.
....
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