Eugene Cecil LaFond standing by his wave recorder installed near the end of the Scripps pier

LaFond designed the wave recorder and Carl Irvin Johnson built it. The sea unit consisted of a metal cylindrical float which moved vertically, guided by two taught wires extending from a heavy weight on the seafloor to the winch shown in the extreme lower right corner. One white line shown in the lower right is attached to the float. The line rests on a wooden wheel and the other end of the line has a counter weight. As the float moves up and down with the ocean swell, the white line turns the wooden wheel. A second wooden wheel acts as a reduction gear and is connected by a line and bar which drives the stylus right and left across the paper as the motor driven drum burns, thus giving a time/height record of the swell. The drum and its gears are from an old seismograph provided by a seismologist in Pasadena. The wave recorder was operated eight minutes each day in 1937-1938 proving swell height and period.

• 1933-1940

• LaFond, Eugene Cecil, 1909-2002

This digital image is a surrogate of an item from the Eugene Cecil LaFond Photographs, 1930-1940

This is a direct duplicate neg made in 1993 by Loren Pigniolo from the 35mm nitrate originals

• Oceanographic instruments

• image

Online finding aid

• Eugene Cecil LaFond Papers

• UC Regents

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2021-08-13