Preface

Fundamentals of Geophysical Data Processing was first published in 1976 by McGraw Hill and later republished by Blackwell in 1985. I was disappointed that it went out of print again so I am now making it available free on the WWW. This electronic reincarnation lacks the final two chapters of the original book which I dropped because they are mostly better covered in my later books. A few errors are corrected in the electronic version, but I fear new errors were introduced in the retyping so if you have a copy of the original paper book, keep it!

This book contains basic and interesting material which because it does not play a big role in industrial practice was neglected in my later books. I enjoy teaching these basics from time to time and I use especially chapters 3,4,7,8,9. This is classic material about Toeplitz matrices and layered media. Material from chapters 1,2,5,6 was improved and included in my third book, Earth Soundings Analysis, Processing vrs. Inversion, now in print with Blackwells. This is material about Z-transforms and least squares fitting.

Many people have told me that this book, which was my first book, is the most creative of all my books. I agree. In defense of my more recent books, I would add that they benefitted greatly from the developement of word processors and from my teaching experience. So here you have it. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you are getting it free.