About Us

The Amateur Teleseismic Network (ATN) is the brainchild of two individuals from the Houston, Texas area, John Cole and Frank Cooper.  These individuals began their "hobby" by building and testing various types of homemade seismographs, fine tweaking their designs in order to get the finest and most distant seismic signals from around the world.  Needless to say, the results were spectacular.  John tends to play the role of craftsman by designing and building sensors while Frank tests the instruments. 

John has designed both horizontal and vertical sensors.  Some of his horizontal sensors range from the very small to the quite large.  The "micro-mini" was a seismograph created to see just how small a horizontal sensor could get.  It would literally fit in the one's hand.  One the other end of the spectrum is the mighty T-Max sensor.  This behemoth is nearly one meter long and gets it's name from the "T" shaped base on which the pendulum sits.  Perhaps John's finest seismograph is the "mini".  It's base is about 10" long with a pendulum approximately 18".  It is a very stable instrument resistant to large temperature differences that gives fantastic results.  John also builds vertical sensors which are quite sensitive to P-Waves.  In fact, one of his experimental verticals is eight feet long!

Both John's and Frank's postings on the Public Seismic Network (PSN) and photos on their web pages gradually drew in interested individuals from the country and eventually from around the world.  Slowly the group began to grow.  Schools, colleges, and just curious individuals actively sought out John to acquire one of these instruments.  Many people drove hundreds of miles to Houston to personally pick up the instruments.  John also began to ship his instruments around the globe.  The most active member outside the U.S. resides in Guatemala.  Rolando Benitez frequently torments his American counterparts with frequent postings of events in and around the seismically active Guatemala region.  Rolando is augmented by Jón Frímann of Hvammstangi, Húnaþing Vestra, Iceland, a region frequented by many earthquakes.  The ATN really expanded its reaches on January 1, 2008 by the addition of Dale Hardy from Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.

Others who have purchased John's equipment are located as far away as the Middle East.

More and more members began to post on Larry Cochrane's PSN site.  Larry could easily be considered the "father of amateur seismology."  He writes various types of computer programs for recording and processing earthquakes in addition to providing a fantastic web site where all amateurs post their events.

Over the years it became obvious the types of postings on the PSN were dominated by owners of John Cole's instruments.  John's seismometers are more of a long period type of instrument making them capable of not only picking up local events but do a healthy job of teleseismic events.  In fact, nearly all of the PSN postings of teleseismic events come from John's instruments.

After numerous emails it was decided to form our own local amateur earthquake network - a younger brother of the PSN.  Since member seismographs specialize in teleseismic events, the term "teleseismic" was included in the name - Amateur Teleseismic Network.  It should be important to point out anyone interested in seismology is highly encouraged to become a member.  You need not posses a seismograph.  Come grow with us.