Early Earthquake Detection and Warning Alarm System in Iran by a Telegraph Operator: A 116-Year-Old Disaster Prevention Attempt

Abstract

According to an article printed in 1909 in a local Iranian newspaper, the New Iran ( Irān‐e Nau ; Fig. 1), a telegraph operator at the remote desert town of Kermān in southeast Iran, using coils of a single wire with return circuit through the ground of his telegraph instrument, picked up the Earth’s movement as an unusual electromagnetic signal on the magnetic needle, which gave a few seconds warning of an earthquake. Apparently, the operator was using a Wheatstone/Cooke‐type needle magneto‐electric telegraph built in the late nineteenth century. Figure 1. Yusef the telegraph operator’s 1909 account of his observations of unusual electromagnetic signals detected just before earthquakes in 1897 and 1909. He first noticed this anomaly on his telegraph instrument during an earthquake in 1897. Two medium‐magnitude earthquakes during that year were strongly felt and documented in Kermān. These were (1) the 22 May 1897 MMI∼VII+ M S∼5.5, Kuhbanān earthquake with its epicenter about 145 km northwest of Kermān; and (2) the 27 May 1897, MMI∼VIII M S∼>5.5 Chatrud earthquake located about 25 km north‐northwest of Kermān (see fig. 3 in Berberian, 2005). The telegraph operator observed that the first earthquake took place during the evening, suggesting that he was referring to the 27 May 1897 event. His second observation of a seismically induced disturbance was during the 27 October 1909, ∼ M S>5.5, MMI>VII+, Jowshān earthquake, with its damage zone located about 58 km to the east‐southeast of Kermān (fig. 5 in Berberian, 2005). The article, translated below from Persian into English, is signed by “Yusef Telegerāfchi va Tahvildār‐e Telegerāf‐khāneh‐ye Kermān” (“Yusef /Joseph, the telegraph operator and cashier of the Kermān Telegraph Office”). The article was printed nine months after the occurrence of the …