Plate tectonics at Lamont: the first year-1966

During the period from the mid 1950s to the 1960s it seemed as if the community of earth scientists was slowly being dragged toward accepting continental drift. But resistance was often steadfast. Each new ideal or set of data produced a trickle of new converts, but also generated heated debate. The concept of sea-floor spreading and the corollary hypothesis that the process of spreading would generate a set of symmetrical magnetic anomalies was particularly disputatious. The discovery of the Eltanin 19 magnetic anomaly profile ended the dispute and the trickle became a flood.