Taipei 101 Damper movement on 12 May 08

At one of the datacenters I used to work in regularly the SAN engineers were always up for demonstrating the base isolation of their Hitachi storage array - The whole thing sat on a plate atop a ball-bearing pit, and could be shoved about a foot in any direction. Which they would invite you to do. Given the weight of the unit you'd never get it to budge more than a cm but they had videos of it during earthquakes showing it moving around the full range of motion. It was very 'v1' as far as base isolation goes and their newer equipment has more sophisticated protection, but it's an interesting field. On a larger scale the use of damping weight to protect entire buildings is amazing to see: ▶ this video

It's not a DC, but Taipei 101 has a mass damper, and there's a video of it swaying during an earthquake. Really impressive how much that things moves! ▶ this video

This damper movement video was really incredible to see ▶ this video The small scale demos just don't do it justice. link

The first I had heard of a tuned mass damper was in the installation on Taipei 101. There's a good video of it moving that gives you an idea of just how colossal these things are: ▶ this video