<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In <\/span>From the Vaults:\u00a0 American Eclipse <\/span><\/i>(4-10-23), we chronicled how a group of scientists and astronomers set out to elevate America\u2019s scientific reputation around the world in the wake of the Total Solar Eclipse of 1878.\u00a0 Prior to that event, the European science community did not have a favorable view of what was happening in the field on our side of the pond.\u00a0 David Baron\u2019s book <\/span>American Eclipse <\/span><\/i>(Liveright Publishing, 2017) explored how the lives and careers of some well known Americans intersected as they mounted expeditions to the western lands of the young United States to observe the 1878 eclipse.\u00a0 Most of the<\/span> American Eclipse <\/span><\/i>article was focused on Vassar College astronomer Maria Mitchell\u2019s cohort traveling to Denver, Colorado to make their observations.\u00a0 The woman from Vassar were there to catch three minutes of eclipse totality as the Moon\u2019s shadow sliced across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Texas as were a host of other American scientists and astronomers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In his book, Baron tracked the movements of several groups of prominent American scientists who planned excursions to observe this event.\u00a0 A secondary goal of these expeditions was to raise the second rate status many other countries seemed to apply to American science and scientists.\u00a0 Professor Simon Newcomb was one home grown scientist who was alarmed by the state of scientific progress in the United States.\u00a0 After being asked to review said progress in 1876, he declared this country was, \u201cin a period of intellectual darkness\u201d that was just beginning to lift.\u00a0 Like Maria Mitchell, Newcomb had landed his first paying job as a computer at the Navy\u2019s Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.\u00a0 These \u2018computers\u2019 were not the electronic devices we are familiar with today but mathematicians charged with computing tables derived\u00a0 from astronomical observations.\u00a0 Of course, Mitchell curried no favor in the male dominated astronomical field.\u00a0 As concerned as he was about \u2018the state of science\u2019, Newcomb\u2019s comments after reading an account of his older and more famous colleague were telling:\u00a0 \u201cMiss M. is the only female astronomer after all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Newcomb was appointed superintendent of the Nautical Almanac (where he worked before his long stint at the Naval Observatory) in 1877 by President Rutherford B. Hayes.\u00a0 As the highly anticipated American eclipse approached, he charged his assistant George W. Hill with constructing a chart of the path and limits of totality.\u00a0 Hill was socially awkward with Newcomb describing him as, \u201cThe finest mathematician in America if not the world, but he can\u2019t say two words.\u201d\u00a0 Hill was a brilliant computer and his chart of the eclipse was published in a special bulletin.\u00a0 It showed the first strike of the Moon\u2019s shadow taking place in Irkoutsk, Siberia.\u00a0 After it left Asia, the path would follow a gently curving line from the western end of the Montana Territory through Yellowstone National Park, the Wyoming Territory, and on to Denver, Colorado before crossing Northern and Eastern Texas before it entered the Gulf of Mexico.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Newcomb\u2019s bulletin added an appeal to the public:\u00a0 \u201cTotal eclipses of the sun are so rare at any one point that the opportunities they offer for studying the attendant phenomena should be utilized in every way.\u201d\u00a0 Regardless of these public utterances, he confided in his European colleagues his doubts that the U.S. Congress would appropriate the money needed to fund any organized government observing parties.\u00a0 Newcomb was wrong about Congress and when they did indeed pass funding for an observing party, he proposed the area around Creston, Wyoming Territory as the ideal location to set up shop.\u00a0 He favored this area because he felt clear skies were more likely there than closer to Denver.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Through Newcomb\u2019s membership in America\u2019s National Academy of Science he was acquainted with physicist George F. Barker from the University of Pennsylvania.\u00a0 Barker stayed at Newcomb\u2019s residence when the Academy met in Washington, D.C. in April of 1878.\u00a0 Barker\u2019s good friend Thomas A. Edison was also in attendance at this meeting where he demonstrated his newest invention.\u00a0 When his assistant placed it upon a table and turned the crank, the onlookers heard a thin, tinny voice say, \u201cThe speaking phonograph has the honor of presenting itself to the Academy of Science.\u201d\u00a0 As they stared in awe at this new contraption, someone who had seen a previous demonstration said, \u201cI declare, it sounds more like the devil every time.\u201d\u00a0 It was Barker\u2019s connection to Newcomb that got Edison involved in the Wyoming eclipse party.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Thomas Edison\u2019s invention was \u2018astonishingly simple and, simply, astonishing\u2019 (Baron\u2019s description of the speaking phonograph)and it propelled him from obscurity to international celebrity in the early months of 1878.\u00a0 New York journalists heaped superlatives on him like, \u2018The Napoleon of Science\u2019, \u2018The Jersey Columbus\u2019, and \u2018The Wizard of Menlo Park\u2019.\u00a0 One began calling Menlo Park \u2018Edisonia\u2019.\u00a0 Some viewed Edison\u2019s invention as some sort of trickery with one college professor musing, \u201cThe idea of a talking machine is ridiculous.\u201d\u00a0 Baron describes the historic moment as, \u201cThe notion that one could capture sound and release it at will seemed magical, like dabbling in the dark arts.\u00a0 After all, the phonograph was mere metal – not lips, no teeth, no tongue – and yet it spoke, enabling a person\u2019s voice to live beyond the grave.\u00a0 \u2018Speech has become, as it were, immortal,\u2019 commented <\/span>Scientific American.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Everyone wanted to see the device, to hear it, to talk about it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The thirty-one year old Edison had gotten the world\u2019s attention and at the Washington meeting, he showcased another idea he had come up with to improve Alexander Graham Bell\u2019s telephone.\u00a0 While the Bell\u2019s telephone was also an amazing invention, one literally had to yell into it to (barely) be heard on the other end.\u00a0 Edison devised a solution when he noticed an interesting property of carbon – its electrical resistance varied dramatically with pressure.\u00a0 Edison collected carbon soot from his kerosene lamps and compressed it into small disks.\u00a0 These\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018carbon buttons\u2019 (as he called them) were then placed in the mouthpiece of his own telephone design.\u00a0 When connected to a battery, the carbon amplified the vibrations of the human voice into an electrical signal strong enough to produce a clear, loud sound from the telephone receiver.\u00a0 Edison also coined the greeting \u2018halloo\u2019 (which evolved into today\u2019s standard \u2018hello\u2019) that became the accepted norm, replacing Bell\u2019s greeting of \u2018ahoy\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The carbon buttons would be Edison\u2019s entry point into the American Eclipse story through astronomer Samual Peirpont Langley.\u00a0 Langley became interested in science as a young boy when he would hold his hands up to the sun and wonder how the rays made them warm and where the heat came from.\u00a0 This early interest was the first basis of his later career studying the radiant heat of our star using a sensitive electrical thermometer called a thermopile.\u00a0 Seeking an instrument that was even more responsive than his thermopile, Langley asked Edison for help:\u00a0 \u201cIf you could make something . . .say one hundred times as sensitive, you would not perhaps produce anything commercially paying, but you certainly would confer a precious gift on science.\u201d\u00a0 This suited Edison fine as he always considered himself a \u2018discoverer\u2019 of useful things and not just a \u2018crass promoter\u2019 seeking to capitalize on other\u2019s discoveries.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Asked by a journalist, \u201cHave you made any recent improvements or discovered any new applications of your instruments?\u201d\u00a0 Edison revealed how he planned to enter the astronomical field.\u00a0 He told the reporter, \u201cWell, nothing recently, so far as the phonograph is concerned.\u00a0 Night before last,I found out some additional points about the carbon which I use in my carbon telephone.\u00a0 It may be used as a heat measurer.\u00a0 It will detect one forty-thousandth of a degree Fahrenheit.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know but what I can make an arrangement by which the heat of the stars will close the circuit at the proper time automatically and directly.\u00a0 It is a curious idea on this miserable little Earth, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 But I do not think that it is impossible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Edison christened his new device a <\/span>tasimeter <\/span><\/i>(tas-<\/span>sim<\/span><\/i>-i-ter) from the Greek for \u2018extension\u2019 and \u2018measure\u2019.\u00a0 The device used a carbon disk compressed between two metal plates attached to a battery.\u00a0 A rod of vulcanized rubber was set in place to push against the carbon when heat caused it to expand.\u00a0 In demonstrating the tasimeter, Edison now claimed it was accurate enough to measure the millionth part of a degree Fahrenteit (and twenty-fold increase in his previous prediction of fifty-thousandth of a degree made a month earlier).\u00a0 Not wanting to be seen as a huckster profiteering from his inventions, it is interesting to note the demonstration was done before a select audience invited to attend after a musical performance held in New York\u2019s entertainment district that featured his phonograph in concert with a pipe organ and trumpet.<\/span><\/p>\n During this press event at Irving Hall, the Wizard of Menlo Park explained that by focusing starlight gathered with a telescope into the tasimeter, one could measure the tiny amount of heat arriving from a far-off celestial body.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Though Edison\u2019s friend George Barker was unable to secure a spot on the Congressionally funded trip west organized by Simon Newcomb, he was able to find a slot in a private eclipse expedition being assembled by New York University professor Henry Draper.\u00a0 Draper was also acquainted with Edison and invited \u2018the Wiz\u2019 to visit him.\u00a0 Edison replied, \u201cI will try and call at your place and see how you peek at the almighty through a keyhole.\u201d\u00a0 After accepting Draper\u2019s invitation to join the eclipse party, Barker then invited Edison who accepted.\u00a0 Edison had been stressed by a furor over a theory involving something he called \u2018etheric force\u2019.\u00a0 It would take too long to explain this episode but suffice to say in the era of snake oil remedies and magical devices, Edison didn\u2019t always hit home runs.\u00a0 \u2018Etheric force\u2019 was one of those times he struck out.\u00a0 The trip west was seen as a way to distance himself from the uproar his \u2018etheric force\u2019 idea had caused and to test his tasimeter.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There was only one major problem with the tasimeter:\u00a0 he had assembled the internal components, but he had not yet assembled a complete device.\u00a0 From his demonstrations, it was also clear such readings from such a sensitive instrument could be unduly influenced by things like the body heat of the person operating the device.\u00a0 The heat from a human hand held up in line with the tasimeter at a distance of 30 feet would cause the needle to swing wildly to the right.\u00a0 Edison staked his reputation on a device that didn\u2019t actually exist, yet he proposed using it to measure the heat of the Sun\u2019s corona during the eclipse.\u00a0 He had little time to experiment with it before he headed west.\u00a0 One of his distractions was a public spat with an inventor in London who designed something he called a <\/span>microphone<\/span><\/i> that worked on the same principles of the carbon phone (Edison accused David Hughes of \u2018stealing\u2019 his invention).\u00a0 On July 13, Edison left his family to meet up with the rest of the expedition in New York.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Draper party set up shop at a home next to the Union Pacific railroad station in Rawlins, Wyoming.\u00a0 Thomas Edison needed a shelter to house his telescope and apparatus and the only suitable one was the homeowner\u2019s chicken coop.\u00a0 With the prairie winds buffeting the structure, they spent a good deal of time trying to shore up the building to prevent the constant shaking from disrupting the readings he hoped to obtain.\u00a0 As the final thirty seconds of totality ticked away, the wind abated and Edison was finally able to focus his telescope and device on the corona.\u00a0 The needle shot to the right indicating there was indeed heat being emitted by the Sun\u2019s crown, but the device was too sensitive to get an accurate measurement.\u00a0 Edison was ecstatic – he had proven his tasimeter worked and even though the wind picked up again, preventing him from trying to get another reading, he had what he came for.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The press breathlessly reported Edison\u2019s success with the tasimeter – everything Edison did was newsworthy.\u00a0 Conflicting reports, however, said \u2018it was an unqualified success\u2019 and \u2018Edison\u2019s tasimeter failed to work satisfactorily\u2019, sometimes in the same dispatch.\u00a0 The Wizard went so far as to say the instrument was so sensitive that it might be used to discover the heat of stars too faint to see with the human eye.\u00a0 Unheard of at the time and not privy to what would be achieved in the future, Edison had more or less predicted the invention of infrared telescopes – devices that a century later would be used to \u2018see\u2019 through interstellar dust clouds and discover hidden galaxies that eluded detection with conventional telescopes.\u00a0 Edison assured all he could refine the tasimeter\u2019s calibrations to make it a valuable scientific tool.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the end, Edison declined to patent his invention.\u00a0 He felt it would only be of interest to scientists (meaning \u2018no real commercial value\u2019) so he allowed companies in London and Philadelphia to manufacture them royalty-free.\u00a0 Ultimately, tests revealed the tasimeter to be too erratic for quantitative measurement purposes, and it was soon abandoned and forgotten.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0About two miles west of the Continental Divide, Battle Lake sits among the Sierra Madre Mountains of southern Wyoming.\u00a0 A bronze plaque next to State Highway 70 commemorates Edison\u2019s next, and perhaps most famous, invention.\u00a0 After the eclipse observing party left Rawlings, George Barker, Edison, and a group of men took time to go fishing.\u00a0 Some fifty years later, Robert Galbraith (the Union Pacific railroad mechanic who had loaned Edison his chicken coop during the eclipse) related the events depicted on the historical marker:\u00a0 \u201cAfter we had been [at Battle Lake] about three days, one morning at the breakfast table, Edison was asked by Professor Barker \u2018Well, Tom, how did you rest last night?\u2019\u00a0 \u2018Well,\u2019 he said, \u2018I wasn\u2019t thinking about resting.\u00a0 I lay and looked up at the beautiful stars and clear sky light, and I invented an incandescent electric light.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Barron points out later versions explained Edison had been inspired by the burning fibers of a bamboo fishing pole – the brightly burning strips of wood giving him the idea of a heated element in a glass bubble to produce electric light.\u201d\u00a0 It is a fanciful story passed down by locals to remember the Wizard\u2019s stay in Wyoming.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Edison detailed the invention of the light bulb with one of his own quotes:\u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t fail 1000 times.\u00a0 The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.\u201d\u00a0 Some misapplied his answer to a question about finding a way to store electricity in a container, he replied, \u201cI now know 999 different ways that won\u2019t work.\u201d\u00a0 What we do know is these accomplishments awaited him back in Menlo Park after the Great American Eclipse of 1878.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It has been 146 years since the Great American Eclipse.\u00a0 On April 8, 2024, over 20 million Americans will get a chance to see the next Great American Eclipse.\u00a0 The path of totality on April 8 will stretch from central Texas to the Michigan \/ Ohio border and on to Maine.\u00a0 Those living along the shore of Lake Superior will see anywhere from 85 percent coverage (Sault Ste, Marie) to 70 percent (Duluth, MN).\u00a0 Coverage for the Ontonagon Country area will be about 75 percent, but remember, NEVER look at the Sun, even in eclipse, without approved glasses designed to protect your eyes.\u00a0 Damage to the retina does NOT heal like a cut on your finger!<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Manfred Man’s Earth Band – Solar Fire from 1973<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In From the Vaults:\u00a0 American Eclipse (4-10-23), we chronicled how a group of scientists and astronomers set out to elevate America\u2019s scientific reputation around the world in the wake of the Total Solar Eclipse of 1878.\u00a0 Prior to that event, the European science community did not have a favorable view of what was happening 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