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A historical reflection on reflections

WesternGeco, Houston, USA

(Editor's note: Seismic reflection experiments performed for resource exploration consist of three steps—data acquisition, data processing, and data interpretation. The history of data acquisition and processing is the subject of this article. Rocky Roden and Don Herron discuss interpretation history in the next article.)

In the summer of 1921, a small team of physicists and geologists (William P. Haseman, J. Clarence Karcher, Irving Perrine, and Daniel W. Ohern) performed a historical experiment near the Vines Branch area in south-central Oklahoma. Using a dynamite charge as a seismic source and a special instrument called a seismograph (Figure 1), the team recorded seismic waves that had traveled through the subsurface of the earth. Analysis of the recorded data (Figure 2) showed that seismic reflections from a boundary between two underground rock layers had been detected. Further analysis of the data produced an image of the subsurface—called a seismic reflection profile (Figure 3a)—that agreed with a known geologic feature. That result is widely regarded as the first proof that an accurate image of the earth's subsurface could be made using reflected seismic waves.