CONTACT US
Erick Bengel | Weekend Editor
ebengel@dailyastorian.com
WEEKEND
BREAK
FOLLOW US
facebook.com/
DailyAstorian
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2017 • 1C
New York Public Library Digital Collection
This was the total eclipse of the sun as observed July 29, 1878, at Creston, Wyoming Territory.
Pacifi c Northwest eclipses
illuminate solar system’s mysteries
Prepare to scare
away sun-devouring
monster Aug. 21
By MATT WINTERS
EO Media Group
fter sunrise on July 18, 1860,
the sky west of the mouth of the
Columbia turned back to night, as
if a cavern was opening between
this and a darker world. Soon, all around,
there was an “unearthy ghastly glow.”
The 498 whites in Clatsop County and
Pacifi c County’s 406 — along with hun-
dreds of equally human Native Americans
the 1860 Census didn’t deign to count —
would have witnessed something like the
following as a total eclipse formed off-
shore and began racing halfway around
the planet:
“The western horizon was lost in dark-
ness, and the conical hills to the north-
north-west were invisible, while the
clouds toward the east sent forth a bright
glow of light, from the sun shining on
their fronts. At this moment bright waving
lines of light fl ickered one after another
over the ground parallel to my line of
sight with the sun. On looking upward
from these I found the sun had already
disappeared, and that I had missed the for-
mation of the corona. The black circle of
the moon was already surrounded by this
crown of glory; two stars shone brightly
a few degrees from the sun, and so mag-
nifi cent was the spectacle above, as glo-
rious as the spectacle below, that I could
not help looking a few moments from the
one to the other. A bright light, I think of
a greenish-yellow colour, skirted the hori-
zontal sky, and the banks of cumuli shone
with a brilliant glow. The darkness was
not intense; the light from the corona and
the distant refractions far surpassed the
brightest moonlight …
“Though much occupied with these
observations, the impression produced by
the total eclipse is one which can never be
effaced from the mind.”
Described in Tedula, Spain, by Uni-
versity of Dublin teacher R.A. Thomp-
son, this very eclipse began over the
ocean just southwest of Cape Disappoint-
ment. It ripped across North America —
mostly through unpopulated areas of Can-
ada including Hudson’s Bay — over the
Atlantic and through Spain and North-
ern Africa before evaporating three hours
later into nothingness above the Red Sea.
Totality — the time the sun’s disc
was completely covered by the moon —
lasted one minute and 46 seconds in Asto-
ria and Ilwaco. But this deepest shade also
extended north and south; Oysterville’s
1860 total eclipse lasted a minute and 29
seconds, for instance. The New York Times
described it as “a black belt seventy miles
wide, traveling at the speed of 1,850 miles
an hour, or four times the velocity of a can-
non-ball!” It took 51 seconds for the center
of the moon’s shadow to pass over Wash-
ington Territory, a dark angel in silent fl ight.
If anyone in these parts made their own
eloquent observations, I haven’t found
them. Perhaps it was a foggy gray morn-
ing and folks only commented, “Gosh,
even gloomier than usual today!”
Oregon State Archives
S.D. Adair & Co. registered this Eclipse Brand salmon label with the Oregon
Trademarks Office on Oct. 31, 1881 — one of the earliest trademarks in state
history. But it’s possible Adair began using the brand up to three years earlier,
in the wake of the famous July 1878 solar eclipse.
Edison managed to fi nd a shared hotel
room, where his fi rst night was inter-
rupted by an ardent fan.
“After we retired and were asleep a
thundering knock on the door awakened
us,” Edison recalled years later. “Upon
opening the door, a tall, handsome man
with fl owing hair, dressed in Western
style, entered the room. His eyes were
bloodshot and he was somewhat inebri-
ated. He introduced himself as ‘Texas
Jack’… and he said he wanted to see
Edison as he had read about me in the
newspapers.”
During the precious minutes of the
eclipse, Draper’s efforts to photograph the
sun’s corona succeeded, a major research
coup for the time. Edison’s attempt to
measure any eclipse-related change in air
temperature failed.
This summer’s big event
Jack Edwards/Columbia River Maritime Museum
North River Packing Co., which operated near the north shore of what is now
called Willapa Bay, issued this creative depiction of the 1878 eclipse.
Matt Winters/EO Media Group
This 19th century telescope includes a specialized lens for looking at the sun.
The great eclipse of 1878
The eclipse of July 29, 1878, began
near Mongolia and arched over Southwest
Alaska before petering out east of Cuba.
It wasn’t total in our area — around the
Columbia estuary about 85 percent of the
sun’s surface was covered. But it appears
to have made a keen impression.
Two different local salmon canneries
soon began using “Eclipse Brand” labels
— one like a giant black melanoma and
the other a celestial waltz between sun
and moon above the Shoalwater Bay
wilderness.
Up in the Olympic Peninsula town
of Queets where the sun was 89 percent
shrouded, a Quinault Indian quoted in
the book “Coquelle Thompson” recalled,
“The old people made all the noise they
could. They got on top of their houses and
pounded on the roofs with sticks. They
shouted, shot off their guns, and beat on
their drums.” It was thought the racket
would scare away whatever demon was
eating the sun.
Elsewhere in the country, the 1878
eclipse ignited an almost equally fren-
zied reaction — by scientists. It was the
stuff of legend when I was growing up in
Wyoming, having attracted 31-year-old
Thomas Edison to the territory. As school
kids we were taught he realized how to
make a long-lasting light bulb fi lament
when a bamboo fi ber curled up from his
fl y rod and snagged his imagination.
Sadly, this “light bulb invented while
trout fi shing” story is untrue. But the
celebrity inventor of the phonograph did
in fact come west to the Union Pacifi c
Railroad boomtown of Rawlins, Wyo-
ming, as a guest in a scientifi c expedition
led by astronomer Henry Draper.
My fi rst partial solar eclipse was
on July 20, 1963. Already a little
science nerd at age 5, two things stuck
with me:
• Daddy thoroughly warned that look-
ing at the sun, even partially eclipsed,
would burn my eyes out. Recently given
a magnifying glass I used to burn holes
through scraps of paper and — may their
gods forgive me — a few hapless ants, I
could easily picture the sun punching tiny
smoking craters into the backs of my eye-
balls. This image still fl ashes through my
mind whenever I sit at Ilwaco’s lone traf-
fi c light on September mornings, the ris-
ing sun crouched straight ahead like a
waiting archer aiming at its prey.
When buying a telescope 40 years ago
that may have been built for or inspired
by the 1878 eclipse, I was partly sold by
its specialized “sun lens” — blackened in
such a manner that the sun and its spots
may be “safely” observed.
• The genuinely cautious way to mon-
itor progress of an eclipse is to create a
simple camera-like device. Using a pin to
make a hole in a stiff piece of cardboard,
you hold it between the sun and a sheet of
paper, adjusting the distance between the
two until a sharp circle of light is formed
on the target. Even after half a century, I
recall a fast-growing bite forming in that
glowing cookie of light. It was a con-
vincing demonstration of interconnected-
ness — our solar system as a living thing,
humans as beings of the sun, illuminating
it with our understanding.
The coming eclipse on the morn-
ing of Aug. 21 won’t be total here at the
mouth of the Columbia, but will come as
close as most of us will ever experience.
NASA’s convenient online tool (tinyurl.
com/Eclipse-Calculator) says the sun will
be nearly 97 percent covered here. The
remaining 3 percent will still be enough to
damage eyesight, and our newspapers will
contain ample advice on how to observe
the eclipse. Three percent also is likely to
make the corona — the sun’s frizzy Ein-
stein hair — invisible to us. And we’ll
be spared the throngs expected along the
path of totality that begins between New-
port and Lincoln City.
I hope many locals will take the morn-
ing off to watch from atop Saddle Moun-
tain or some other promontory. Take your
kids. Scream and shout. Save our sun
from the monster.