America's First Great Eclipse:
Ruskin, Steve
ISBN 10: 0999140906 ISBN 13: 9780999140901
Published by Alpine Alchemy Press, 2017
Used
Soft cover
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World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
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About this Item
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Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00103393785
Synopsis:
America’s First Great Eclipse takes readers on a thrilling historical journey, revealing that nineteenth-century Americans were just as excited about a total solar eclipse as we are today ... and, like us, were willing to travel thousands of miles to see it.
The ‘Great American Eclipse’ of 2017 and the upcoming ‘Great North American Eclipse’ of 2024 were not the first eclipses to deserve such titles. In the summer of 1878, when the American West was still wild, hundreds of astronomers and thousands of tourists traveled by train to Wyoming, Colorado, and Texas to witness America’s first ‘Great Eclipse.’
America’s First Great Eclipse tells the story of a country, and its scientists, on the brink of a new era. Near the end of the nineteenth century, when the United States was barely a hundred years old, American astronomers were taking the lead in a science that Europeans had dominated for centuries. Scientists like Samuel Langley, Henry Draper, Maria Mitchell, and even the inventor Thomas Edison, were putting America at the forefront of what was being called the “new astronomy.”
On July 29, 1878, having braved treacherous storms, debilitating altitude sickness, and the threat of Indian attacks, they joined thousands of East-coast tourists and Western pioneers as they spread out across the Great Plains and climbed to the top of 14,000-foot Pikes Peak, all to glimpse one of nature’s grandest spectacles: a total solar eclipse. It was the first time in history so many astronomers observed together from higher elevations. The Rocky Mountain eclipse of 1878 was not only a turning point in American science, but it was also the beginning of high-altitude astronomy, without which our current understanding of the Universe would be impossible.
22 illustrations.
About the Author: Steve Ruskin is an award-winning historian, with a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Notre Dame. He is a native of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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Bibliographic Details
Title: America's First Great Eclipse:
Publisher: Alpine Alchemy Press
Publication Date: 2017
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good