The most commonly used scale to measure earthquake magnitude is the Richter scale. Developed by Charles F. Richter in 1935, it quantifies the size of seismic waves produced by an earthquake. This logarithmic scale means that each whole number increase on the Richter scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in measured amplitude and approximately 31.6 times more energy release. Although it has been supplemented by other scales like the moment magnitude scale for measuring larger quakes, the Richter scale remains widely recognized.