Eötvös torsion balance (gravity variometer)
Balanza de torsión de Eötvös (variómetro de gravedad)
- Date
- 1890 · confidence medium
- Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Credited to
- Loránd Eötvös
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A highly sensitive torsion pendulum that measures horizontal variations in the gravity field caused by buried masses. It made gravimetric prospecting for oil and salt possible.
Eötvös developed it from the Coulomb and Cavendish torsion balances; he presented it in 1890 and refined it in the following decade. The first prospecting success was in present-day Slovakia (Egbell/Gbely) around 1917.
What it led to
- the first geophysical method for oil prospecting (Egbell, 1915-1917)
- gravity gradiometry
- applied geophysics