Giuseppe MercalliDied 19 Mar 1914 at age 63 (born 21 May 1850). Italian volcanologist, seismologist and clergyman who devised the Mercalli Intensity Scale (1902), as an improvement of the Rossi-Forel Scale. He was ordained as a Roman catholic priest and later became a professor at the seminary of Milan. The intensity on Mercalli's scale is and estimate based on the observations of persons that experienced the earthquake. Using Roman numerals, it ranges from I for imperceptible shaking to XII for catastrophic destruction of structures. The revision produced in 1931 by American seismologists, Harry Wood and Frank Neumann, is known as the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale, now in use. Whereas “magnitude,” as on the Richter Scale, ranks an earthquake by the energy released at the source, “intensity” describes the local effects as experienced by observers at any given location from the epicenter.« |
