Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935 after developing it in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg; both worked at the California Institute of Technology.

After graduating from Los Angeles High School he attended Stanford University and received his undergraduate degree in 1920.

Richter went to work at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1927 after Robert Andrews Millikan offered him a position as a research assistant there,[3] where he began a collaboration with Beno Gutenberg.

As Richter seldom published in peer reviewed scientific journals, that is often considered his most important contribution to seismology.

The city government of Los Angeles removed many ornaments and cornices from municipal buildings in the 1960s as a result of Richter's awareness campaigns.

[4] At the time when Richter began a collaboration with Gutenberg, the only way to rate shocks was a scale developed in 1902 by the Italian priest and geologist Giuseppe Mercalli.

The Mercalli scale uses Roman numerals and classifies earthquakes from I to XII, depending on how buildings and people responded to the tremor.

A shock that set chandeliers swinging might rate as a I or II on this scale, while one that destroyed huge buildings and created panic in a crowded city might count as an X.

The obvious problem with the Mercalli scale was that it relied on subjective measures of how well a building had been constructed and how used to these sorts of crises the population was.

[4][7] At his retirement party, a group of Caltech colleagues called the "Quidnuncs" played and sang a ditty titled "Richter Scale", which told in ballad style of earthquakes in American history.