Intensity like signal strength will generally fall off with distance from the source, although it also depends on the local conditions and the pathway from the source to the point.
Charles Francis Richter

I repeatedly have to correct this belief. In a sense, magnitude involves steps of 10 because every increase of one magnitude represents a tenfold amplification of the ground motion. But there is no 'scale of 10' in the sense of an upper limit.
Charles Francis Richter

Incidentally, the usual designation of the magnitude scale to my name does less than justice to the great part that Dr. Gutenberg played in extending the scale to apply to earthquakes in all parts of the world.
Charles Francis Richter

For example, some stars put out large amounts of energy in the infrared part of the spectrum, so that this can produce a different relative magnitude rating than using light energy from the middle of the spectrum.
Charles Francis Richter

As seismologists gained more experience from earthquake records, it became obvious that the problem could not be reduced to a single peak acceleration. In fact, a full frequency of vibrations occurs.
Charles Francis Richter

From here, it becomes an engineering problem; the engineer considers the ground motion that will occur and evaluates the requirements of the proposed structure in the light of the local foundation conditions.
Charles Francis Richter

We would have been happy if we could have assigned just three categories, large, medium, and small; the point is, we wanted to avoid personal judgments. It actually turned out to be quite a finely tuned scale.
Charles Francis Richter

If the assumptions used in calculating energy are changed, then this seriously affects the final result, even though the same body of data might be used.
Charles Francis Richter