Early Applications of Anti-seismic Measures

This chapter contains the first historical mentions known to the author of measures aimed at mitigating seismic risk. Even in this field, unexpectedly, the ancient Greeks of the Hellenistic period were precursors. The means used by the ancient Greeks were rudimentary, but that clearly showed how they fully understood the phenomenon and had correctly identified the solution to adopt. Their knowledge, similarly to what happened with mathematics and astronomy, was then lost and it took more than 2000 years to regain it. We had to wait until the twentieth century to find a rational approach to the problem and the first applications again. Among the first applications, the seismic isolation of the Pestalozzi school in Skopje, Macedonia, is described here, which, according to the author, marks the beginning of the application of anti-seismic devices in structures.