The Premodern Descriptive Earthquake Catalogs of von Hoff (1840–1841), Perrey (1845–1850), and Mallet (1853–1855) Under a Magnifying Glass

Abstract

Abstract The global premodern descriptive catalogs of von Hoff (1840–1841), Perrey (1845–1850), and Mallet (1853–1855), all covering the period from Antiquity to 1842, have been used to populate the preinstrumental section of parametric catalogs since the late 1960s. The earthquake lists of these three authors have been individually analyzed to compile a comprehensive inventory of the sources on which they relied. Conversely to previous analyses and uses that were focused—primarily if not exclusively—on their seismological content, both in the compilation of the inventory and in this article the hundreds of items supplying earthquake records are in the foreground. After having merged these three sets of sources and having obtained a comprehensive list of about 5000 earthquakes and two times more source entries, similarities and differences are evidenced. This comprehensive analysis is meant to catch and explain how the preference given to one source among many available may have affected the interpretation of the collected records and influenced the accuracy and reliability of the earthquake lists by von Hoff, Perrey, and Mallet, and consequently of their contribution to the construction of the global modern parametric earthquake catalogs.