Are seismographs used today

Answer 1

Certainly. Many of the real old timers, precision instruments of the heavy-duty variety have stood up well and are still in action. There is a ( just discovered this a few minutes ago on the net) a modified Wiechert type seismograph in Sarajevo that dates to the Austro-Hungarian empire- and was installed in l905 and is going strong as a working instrument, not a mere museum piece of antiquity. There are differfent types of seismograph and seismometer is usually applied to more-or-less portable models used for oil and other prospecting- not limited entirely to earthquake studies, thought hat was and is their primary purpose. Some of the generic types are Wiechert, beam displacement- which has two recorders at a 90 degree axis- like an L-shaped room and there is an arrangement of lights and mirrors, more modern ones would use Lasers- there were light-beam seismomometers in use as far back as l952 used to monitor Nuclear bomb tests ( ths shock waves). The Gallitzin, developed around l906 in Czarist Russia, was the first type primarily made to measure vertical shocks. It is an interesting study to see the various forms this device has taken .