Charles Francis Richter developed a logarithmic scale to measure intensity. The name "magnitude" for this measurement came from Richter's childhood interest in astronomy - astronomers measure the intensity of stars in magnitudes. Gutenberg's contribution was substantial, but his aversion to interviews contributed to his name being left off the scale. After the publication of the proposed scale in 1935, seismologists quickly adopted it for use in measuring the intensity of earthquakes. Richter remained at the Carnegie Institute until 1936, when he obtained a post at the California Institute of Technology, where Beno Gutenberg worked. Gutenberg and Richter published "Seismicity of the Earth" in
Order of magnitude An order-of-magnitude difference between two values is a factor of 10. For example, the mass of the planet Saturn is 95 times that of Earth, so Saturn is "two orders of magnitude" more massive than Earth. Order-of-magnitude differences are called decades when measured on a logarithmic scale. Other orders of magnitude may be calculated using bases other than 10. The ancient Greeks ranked the nighttime brightness of celestial bodies by 6 levels in which each level was the fifth root of one hundred (about 2.512) as bright as the nearest weaker level of brightness, and thus the brightest level being