Earthquake Recorder Designed In N.Z.

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31784, 14 September 1968, Page 7

Earthquake Recorder Designed In N.Z.

An Instrument designed and built in New Zealand is being used extensively overseas to record ground and building motion during severe earthquakes. Called the M. 0.2 accelerograph, it was designed in 1966 by two Department of Scientific and Industrial Research officers at the Physics and Engineering Laboratory, Lower Hutt It is made under licence by Victoria Engineering, Limited, Lower Hutt and is already being used widely in New Zealand, and exported to the, United States, Australia, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Besides 60 instruments already exported, inquiries about It have been received from Italy, Jugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Africa, Mexico and Chile. Mr H. Nuttall, managing director of Victoria Engineering, Limited, said: "Two of the accelerographs were used on the West Coast to measure the after-shocks of the Inangahua earthquake, and others are installed at hydro projects, building sites, and research centres around the county.” The very sensitive Instru-

ments were protected in tnnthe top of a building in San Francisco or to the site of a proposed mine in the Bougainville Jungle—in speci-ally-designed packaging. "The advantages of the D.5.1.R.'8 accelerograph are that it is smaller and considerably cheaper than similar instruments produced overseas,” said Mr Nuttall, “it is only two-thirds of the cost of its nearest competitor on the United States market, and it is just aa efficient "In some American cities, buildings more than a certain height must have instruments similar to the accelerograph Installed, so that the extent of earthquakes can be measured and so that structural engineers can study the way in which different types of construction behave during earth tremors,” he said.

“Countries such as Turkey. Japan, Chile, and part of the United States are more subject to, and therefore more sensitive about, serious earthquakes than we are here in New Zealand,” said Mr Nuttall. "That is why a substantia) export market is being up for this New Zea-land-made instrument”