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The '''Richter scale'''<ref>{{Harvnb|Kanamori|1978|p=411}}. {{Harvtxt|Hough|2007|pp=122–126}} discusses the name at some length.</ref> ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|r|ɪ|k|t|ər}}), also called the '''Richter magnitude scale''', '''Richter's magnitude scale''', and the '''Gutenberg–Richter scale''',<ref>{{cite book |last1=McPhee |first1=John |title=Annals of the Former World |date=1998 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |page=608}}</ref> is a measure of the strength of [[earthquake]]s, developed by [[Charles Francis Richter]] in collaboration with [[Beno Gutenberg]], and presented in Richter's landmark 1935 paper, where he called it the "magnitude scale".<ref>{{Harvnb|Kanamori|1978|p=411}}; {{Harvnb|Richter|1935}}.</ref> This was later revised and renamed the '''local magnitude scale''', denoted as ML or {{M|L}}.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gutenberg|Richter|1956b|p=30}}.</ref>
Because of various shortcomings of the original {{M|L}} scale, most seismological authorities now use other similar scales such as the [[moment magnitude scale]] ({{M|w}}) to report earthquake magnitudes, but much of the news media still erroneously refers to these as "Richter" magnitudes. All magnitude scales retain the [[logarithm]]ic character of the original and are scaled to have roughly comparable numeric values (typically in the middle of the scale). Due to the variance in earthquakes, it is essential to understand the Richter scale uses [[common logarithm]]s simply to make the measurements manageable (i.e., a magnitude 3 quake factors 10³ while a magnitude 5 quake factors 10<sup>5</sup> and has seismometer readings 100 times larger).<ref>{{Cite web|title=Discovery Project 17: Orders of Magnitude|url=https://www.stewartmath.com/precalc_7e_dp/precalc_7e_dp17.html|access-date=2022-02-24|website=www.stewartmath.com}}</ref>
==Richter magnitudes==
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