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Significant scientific findings are often directly related to innovations in measurement technology. For investigating the Earth’s interior the invention of the seismography played the most important role. Starting with the first seismograph suitable for scientific investigations by Ewing, Gray and Milne in the 1870s and its improvement by Wiechert around 1900, seismic instrumentation was available in the beginning of the last century to reveal the layered structure of our planet. Since then, instruments were steadily improved, and controlled source experiments and seismic networks significantly contribute today to our understanding of the Earth’s structure and the ongoing dynamic processes as well as to the exploration of resources as oil, gas, water and minerals. At the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences we work on technical innovations and apply them in experiments around the world and at a variety of scales. We develop highly portable, low-cost, high-performance seismic data recording systems, which are designed to be used in “large-N” array configurations (>1000 receivers) and on the sea floor (shallow water). Distributed accoustic sensors (DAS) based on fibre-optic cables allow extremely dense sampling of the seismic wavefields. Seismic sources and receivers integrated in borehole tools illuminate in high-resolution the subsurface during drilling operations (Seismic prediction while drilling, SPWD).