European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - February 4, 1981, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Doily Mon Zine by John Barbour associated press the old Man sits in a chair which has become accustomed to the a kind of genetic Jack by barks because he is Unac countably shut in the bedroom while the visitors Are the living room in is a clutter stacks of books on this or newspaper mag opened and unopened reminders of that other world out there and reminders of a world that used to there is a Grandfather clock that dates from 1906 and an old Underwood against the Wall is an old Seis no longer recording the Shivers of this old Charles Richter is a sort of Seismograph but he is still working at for More than half a Century he has charted the vagaries of this trembling Earth and Given his name to the logarithmic scale that is used to measure those Over the years he has become somewhat resigned to the fall abilities of his planet and the biological forms that cling to no longer at watch Over a working he got his first word on the italian earthquake disaster last november from the regular the death toll was sad but not especially in that part of the he the Story repeats itself with painful the italian poor continue to live in masonry houses that cling to hillsides in earthquake the Earth keeps shaking them the people keep going they dont seem to want to Richter but then neither do he chuckles but Only slightly because his own scale of earthquake intensity shows that the italian tremors were less potent than some that have hit Southern no one moves away from there when it comes to Richter is a practical so Long As earthquakes cant be Man should use Good sense where he has to live with he is guardedly upset with people who continue to inhabit Flimsy buildings in earthquake and he is upset with inadequately constructed buildings that continue to be used although one Day they almost surely will come tumbling if you cant control the he control what you put on he has striven to upgrade the old buildings in downtown los Angeles because Richter can smell potential disaster there is a new Federal stat City Effort to evaluate the but Richter has already been on the record for Many the risk is and there Are serious efforts to work out ways to predict and Richter admires he has nothing but for those who press the panic but ton periodically in this sensitive part of the the russians and the chinese have claimed successes in earthquake but by and Large the business is still in a testing he while there is Hope the problem today is unsafe with All due respect and consideration for the professional experts and administrators who have been Richter Scales involved in this he says with i have to say they Are All too they didst see what happened in 1933 in the Long Beach i there is currently no Conception of the extent or the degree of the destruction that actually took each sentence in his Little speech is its own he is sincerely concerned about downtown los Angeles where thousands work in what he considers unsafe in 1933 and later quakes to the South and downtown los Angeles came through All it has lulled people into thinking the old part of the City is he cant forget that night in 1933 when about 120 people died in the sparsely populated Southern califor Nia and million in damage was measured in depth depression he was working late at the seismology Laboratory at the California Institute of technology in nearby there had been a seminar on Albert Einstein was one of the at the alarm went a he headed straight for the recording he could feel the building the disturbance was Large enough so that it interfered with the operation of the machine which was trying desperately to Correct it devel oped finally into a rather exciting there Are two footnotes to the Einstein and one of richters colleagues were walking across Campus when the quake they were talking about the new science of earthquakes and so absorbed in their Conversa Tion that they didst notice the Trees besides it was Richter didst get Home until 3 or 4 in the his wife was a California accustomed to Earth but i remember particularly her account of the the cat was very displeased and spat at the floor because it want behaving his friends and colleagues say he knows More about earthquakes around the world than anyone just ask him and he can Pluck from his memory the obscure details of the largest known earthquake that struck Colombia and Ecuador in 1906 on the Richter or the chilean earthquake the same year or the san Francisco earthquake the same year that same Charles Richter was a 6yearold on an Ohio More interested in the stars on those Clear nights than in the ground he walked three years later his parents brought him to califor Nia and the next at age he Felt the Earth shake for the first he it was the morning of May and it surprised me no like the other he knows which faults were to How much they his colleagues insist that this Man who was never elected to the National Academy of sciences is rarely applauded for his major they was his landmark Elemen tary first published in he simply put Down everything he they his earthquake along with that of his was important in setting the stage for plate the theory that the continents Are colliding with each Swallow february ing up crust and driving it to the surface his first besides the was science Wells and then in 1926 amazing he was still interested in astronomy when he entered but he graduated from Stanford in 1920 with a degree in he was working on his doctorate in physics at Cal tech when two important things happened to bring him to his ultimate Field of he was having trouble with Laboratory he was working on time delay in the discharge of electrostatic i never really did get to the Bottom of Robert Cal techs director and Winner of the Nobel prize in suggested that perhaps he should switch to theoretical physics and skip the lab which he it was Millikan too who told him about a Job opening in the seismology lab where his expertise in theoretical physics could be applied to new and interesting Earth the Field was a clutter of varying varying Richter and his colleagues set about systematizing it was a very interesting and it developed very i Felt i was getting in on the ground floor and the immediate subsequent years were very important to the development of although retired from Cal he is a partner in the consulting firm of Richter and associates which evaluates Earth structures such As dams for the department of water and he also keeps up on certain academic in his he can work in French and he apologizes that he knows Only a Little he is a product of the old a very dignified Man who when he had arguments with a colleague in Public joined the colleague in Public and Mutual he has endured stories of his and he has a gently ironic sense of he is also very Quick to anger when he perceives something As such As a parody song on the Richter scale at his going away he has an abiding love for science and most especially these Star like More Youthful he even watches the Star he appealed to me As More nearly a realization of the potentialities of science fiction on the it was much More orderly and sensible and it had a definite one Genera theme and i think its summed up Best in the lines which often conclude the episodes when the violence is Spock says it is remarkable that the human race and Kirk comes Back that because we overcame our instinct for that is one of the clearest and strongest messages of the whole richters wife died in three years after they moved into the two bedroom Bungalow where he fives he brings in his own does his own but he has a housekeeper who comes in once in a while to when she this Man who made sense out of the aberrations of the earths random tries to make sense out of that Monument of clutter on his living room at least i get it out of her the stars and stripes Page 13