America's First Great Eclipse: How Scientists, Tourists, and the Rocky Mountain Eclipse of 1878 Changed Astronomy Forever

Ruskin, Steve

ISBN 10: 0999140906 / ISBN 13: 9780999140901

Published by Alpine Alchemy Press, 2017

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # ria9780999140901_new

Bibliographic Details

• Title: America's First Great Eclipse: How Scientists, Tourists, and the Rocky Mountain Eclipse of 1878 Changed Astronomy Forever
• Publisher: Alpine Alchemy Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0999140906
• ISBN 13: 9780999140901
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

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.