Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory

To all potential users of
WWSSN historical data

The USGS Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory (ASL) has in its possession one nearly complete set WWSSN film chips. The film chip library consists mainly of 70 mm images (and, in some cases, 9 mm images) of the original, photographically recorded WWSSN analog seismograms. There are approximately 5 million images in the archive.

Although we cannot loan out the film chips, it is possible to scan them at high resolution. This scanning process does NOT digitize the waveforms (this process is left to the user). Instead, it produces a digital image of the seismogram. Examples may be viewed at Film Scans. If you would like to have a copy of existing scanned images, please write to either Bob Hutt (bhutt@usgs.gov) or Harold Bolton (bolton@usgs.gov), and either of us can tell you what station/dates are already available. For seismogram images not yet scanned, the cost is approximately $4.00/image. However, this cost may be less in the future. Please check with us.