all eyes of the skies this rare event was captured by billions and is made history next week report on the solar eclipse of 1878 in the lives of three american scientists to sought to gain knowledge and notoriety from the celestial event. >> i am so glad to welcome you we are excited to zero welcome the author of american eclipsed we're very excited because this is the wild west meets the stars

and i was reading about it and i thought how interesting 99ers ago if even had a totally eclipsed only from coast to coast pride over colorado that that was a different place it was the wild west and you thank you would come to colorado? because you could stand on the of mountainsywheree and sea better pay and a anywhere else. has a new place in science and the beginning of tourism so little started and whent we first began to record the

mitt was like the end of the world so keep had read theth first to die by a after and they thought it was the end of their era. and tully have another one. if you buy a book tonight you get your very own american eclipse glasses see you can safely view the eclipse. hap not write over colorado this type but over the west. august 21st.21 the best place to see that would beat jackson hole wyoming and we are so excited he is here as an award winning journalist and author and broadcaster. [applause] >> day thanks for coming outigh.

on this rainy night. i am thrilled to be here atbe tattered cover olivier in boulder and this is a real gem. i am thrilled to be here. of course, talking about the t eclipsed in history there is one coming up its our nearfu future for the first time in 99ers it will cross the country coast-to-coast it is a big deal.is is . .

read a little bit from it and told you but first i want to talk about how i came to write the book. the story actually goes back a little further than that so we have to go back to 1994 i was a science correspondent for npr and a solar eclipse, a partial solar eclipse was safe to crosso the country and he explained what was going to happen.

a total solar eclipse is completely different. the ne moon completely obscurese base of the sun creating what he described as the most awe-inspiring spectacle in all of nature so this astronomer from williams college gave me a piece of advice i will always remember. he turned to me and said before you die you owe it to yourself to experience a total solar shon eclipse. if you wait for one to come to you you are going to be waiting for a long time.

in 1998 a total eclipse was coming to the caribbean. it's visible only in a narrow pass about 100 miles wide called the path of totality and in february, 1998 the path of totality was going to cross over aruba so i thought aruba in february summed up like a good h trip anyway. i was out behind the hyatt regency there were a lot of people waiting for the show to begin and we were wearing eclipse glasses like the ones evelyn showed you with cardboard frames in a really dark lenses that enabled us to look at the

sun safely. it begins as a partial eclipse as the moon makes its way in front of the sun so first it looks like it has little notches carved in it and then it grows larger and larger until the sunn became a crescent and it was all very interesting but i wouldn't say that it was spectacular. the day remained bright and not knowing what was going on overhead. bubut we are things started to happen. here i am on this tropical beach and a cool wind kicks up then daylight looks odd, shadows looo very strange, they have become sharp like someone turned up the contrast on tv then i looked offshore and noticed lights on both so clearly it was getting dark so i hadn't realized it.

soon it was obvious it was getting dark and then all of a sudden the lights went out.- a cheer erupted and i took off my glasses because now it onlyw now getting the total phase of the eclipse it is safe to look at the sun with the naked eye. i looked upward and i was just dumbfounded. considering at this point i was in my mid-30s. i have lived on earth long enough to know what the sky looks like. i had seen blue skies and gray skies and starry skies, angryari and pink and sunrise but here was a sky that i had never seen. so first it was the colo colors. up above, it was a deep purple gray like twilight on the horizon of his organs like thes,

sunset, 360 degrees.the up above there were bright stars and planets. so there was jupiter and there was mercury and venus and the plans planets were all aligned and there along that line was this thing. it looked like it was woven from silver thread and it just hung out there in case shimmering. now, that was the sun's outer atmosphere, the solar corona and if you've ever seen a picture, pictures don't do it justice. it isn't simply a ring or halo around the sun. it is fine textured like it is made up of strands of silk.

so there was the sun and there was a planet and i couldn't see how they revolve around the sun. it's like i had left and was looking back at creation and for the first time in my life i felt connected to the universe and all its infancy. and i stood there in what i can only describe as a state of nirvana for all of them hundred 74 seconds, less than three minutes when all of a sudden it was over. the blue sky returned, the stars and the planets and the coronas were gone, the world had returned to normal but i have changed so that how i became an eclipse chaser and this is nows how i spend my time earning hard-earned money. learning hard-earned money. every couple of years i head off to wherever the shadow will fall to experience another couple minutes of cosmic bliss.

but back in 1998 on the beach in aruba as a science writer, i thought i'm going to write a book about eclipse chasing but i knew the time to come out with the book would be in the summer of 2017 because this is when americans will actually care about eclipses so i put the project on hold, went back to the radio, wrote another book that's up here in about six years ago i started to get curious and thought if i'm going to come out with a book in the summer of 2017 i better figure out what it's going to be. i didn't want to just write everything you need to know about eclipses to chase the eclipse of 2017 although those are fine books. i like to tell stories and i wanted to find a really goodod eclipse story, something worthy of a book that was entertaining and enlightening and would

provide the narrative for me to talk about them and what makes them so interesting and why i was so excited about them and why everyone should go see the one this summer. so six years ago i started to look around and it became clear very early on that the best eclipse stories are not fromtim, modern times, they are from the 19th century because back in the 19th century, total solar eclipses warranted justti interesting natural spectacles, they were imported into science. this is the time scientists were just starting to unravel the mysteries of the sun and what is this great ball of fire in the sky, what is it made of and there were certain studies theyd could do when they brin only dul solar eclipse which meant that again these occur once every 18

months somewhere on the planet inconvenient to get to like antarctica or the middle of the pacific and the last almost three minutes but the nations of europe and the u.s. would put together these expeditions, head out where they plot it path of totality, set up their equipment, pray that the clouds did not come along and then in three minutes conduct their studies so we start to look at the various eclipses during the period said there was the it wae of 1868 that crossed over india and there was the eclipse of 1870 different over the mediterranean and each had its own cast of characters and interesting science was beingten done. then i came to the eclipse of 1878. so, july 291878 the path of totality went right down the american frontier across them west in the two returned to

texas. i started to look into what was going on and the first thing i found out which if you google it you will probably find out is the eclipse of 1870 th 1878 thet notable person who came out to the wild west was thomas edison. thomas edison was in wyoming on july 291878 to see a total solar eclipse. this was a 31-year-old thomas edison who just written for his invention of the solar graph and right after he got home from wyoming he started work on a new project which was delightful something the phonograph and likable, he has a little trip out west to see the total eclipse. there's got to be something. of course there was a lot but then i started to think there were dozens of interesting people that cannot wyoming and colorado and texas and i started

to make a list. it was a fascinating time in his life because he did it just to see himself as an inventor, he wanted to be a scientist as we well. this young thomas edison wantedd to respect and wanted to do some basic scientific research so in 1878 he invented a device that is going to be bigger than theti phonograph and brought it out to wyoming. it was a very sensitive heat

detector basically an infrared detector he was going to use to study the solar corona that no one understood what it was to see if it gave off heat as well as light so edison was always an important character. he was coming out west to show that there was going to be this important new device and that he was a real scientist. another scientist i came upon who i thought clearly needed to be one of my main characters is a gentleman named james craig watson. back in that era he was well known as an astronomer at the university of michigan who was well-known as a planet hunter. back in the era they were not just the major planets we all know that there were minor planets. there were not that many asteroids that have been found. they were considered a planet of different names just like the major ones in finding them was a big deal and james craig watson

had a knack for finding asteroids. he was one of the top planet hunters in the world and came out west to wyoming in 1878 to look for a planet. but it wasn't just any planet, it was a planet called bullpen.. before it's showed up on star trek and was shown to be a real planet back in 1878 many astronomers thought the planet orbits of the sun between mercury and the sun so if you look at some of the area it didn't seem to make sense they made the calculations there seems to be something protruding the orbit of a good book for the

kind of life that isn't on the chart. the third main character in this piece of the puck you will see images of the three main characters against harper's weekly from august showing the eclipse over the rocky mountai

mountains. the most famous female scientist was an astronomer and had risen to fame in 1847 when she discovered a comet and received a gold metro to become metal. she was a professor of astronomy which of course at the time was a relatively new all-femaleege college. we talk about the difficulties women have in science even today. you could imagine it would be a lot harder being a female scientist in 1878 so what he read a little bit from what life was like and the kind of treatment she received. despite this she received half the salary paid and injusticesth

she thought. served as lecturer. when they provided a separate apartment for sleeping and have them be observatory room one of the students marked the occasion and tongue and cheek verse. pride of the morning to let to all the stars that lead in the o sleep chamber that needs no other warning ms. mitchell sleeps in a bad. despite the clashes in thenistri administration, mitchell loved her girls as she called her students and they adored her. they took up arms in the fight for women's higher education that was waged in the storm of opposition that download. load

in 1873, the year when the nation was grappling with financial panic, a prominent boston physician introduced a new cause for alarm in the incendiary book called sex in education or a fair chance for the girls doctor clark warned that the push for female colleges and education could seriously undermine the health of american women and contended it would cause a girls body especially reproductive organs to atrophy. when it is nearly or quite completed produces a change in the woman's character into this included a dropping out of maternal instincts and appearance of amazonian coarseness and force. such persons are analogous to t this class of termites.

clarke recounted case studies of previously healthy girls who after studying at other schools became pale, sterile. in one instance he diagnosed death from the overworked. thrown on the defensive proponents of the women's education published a barrage of rebuttals offering evidence of the health of college girls and stressing the benefits of higher learning. if we know the number of young girls that died from over studying what us fin but us finr died from aimless lives and those that lived on and ceased to be on. critics called up the book for what it was, he said hysterical polemic based on scanty evidence. no matter if found a receptive audience in an america unshelled by the gender roles. having killed well over half a. million men but left many women

unmarried forcing them to enter the workforce.g meanwhile the successful effort to abolish slavery had inspired women to seek their own including the right to vote which was no longer deny at least in theory. american society was changing s. irrevocably but it seemed when men were iwomenwere in danger or being women and men would soon be an escalated and ceased to be men. the book foretold of this future. so, maria mitchell against an american society that not only didn't see women as scientists didn't even think that they should be educated in colleges to a large extent did something truly remarkable in 1878, so at that time when there were these groups of men, thomas edison with his team and the u.s. government, ryan mitchell assembled an all-femaleell

expedition and it came to denv denver. iin the insert in the back of my book you will find a stereo card image of a college party on the plains outside of denver and so this of course was a scientific expedition that was more than that. it was a kind of political theater and a chance to show an american public that women could be scientists. they could be smart and educated and healthy and they could be feminine. and i just love this image of these women in victorian dresses with their telescopes waiting for the eclipse. so in the end i identified the three main or is each of whom were fascinating characters an who have a lot on the line during the eclipse they have something to prove that i havewe

secondary characters, interesting people at that time who came out west for the eclipse as well and i should say there'this kind of another largr character and that is our nation anthe united states of america because the eclipse of 1878 the u.s. had a lot on the line. this was a time when we were a young country we just turned 100-years-old couple yearsd before. we've are becoming very strong economically, getting the world's attention in terms of our industrial strength. but the world with down on us in terms of our intellectual intel abilities. europe was the center of western culture. europe is where most of the goo literature and art and music and science came from but there was a small group of american scientists who were determined to show that we could compete on the global stage and this was our chance.

total eclipses do no not cause s any given country that often adhere a total eclipse so important to science was going to cross our own backyard into the u.s. i as we really wanted o show the world that we wanted to be taken seriously and the clips of 1878 rallied america around science. as i was reading newspaper articles was fascinating how the country didn't care much about science and suddenly embraced science and we wanted our own team to show the world we were just as good as those folks in europe. there's just this built-in dramd because planning eclipse expeditions this is something that took years. people were looking forward to the eclipse for years.

they spent months literally planning the expedition sometimes spent weeks traveling out to the wild west setting up their equipment and it all came down to three minutes. so, as i get up towards the kind of totality, tim kind of dilates so i actually have three full chapters that are just about 1878 because so much happens on that one day i have one chapterr that's about the early afternoon leading up to the beginning of the partial eclipse and the hava second chapters of the partial eclipse and a full chapter that's just about what happened in those three minutes so let me just finish by reading the last minute before the onset of the total eclipse and i will just say that again a reminder for anyone going to see the eclipse this year you can and should

work with the naked eye but if you are not in the path of totality, and even in the path of totality anytime when the suns surface is visible you've got to use eclipse glasses and even back then people wore eclipse glasses. they were not up to modern standards but people took pieces of glass and smoked them over flames to make them really dark so the folks watching the d partial eclipse through smoked glass. with just a minute to go before totality, a bizarre phenomenon became visible to some. it was being projected through shallow water at the beach narrow bands of light and shade rippled across the ground from the viewpoint of astronomer edward holden stationed atop the house hotel in central cityta colorado across the roof. the course after each other very rapidly about 3 feet from center to center.

the wavy lines are not always seen but can be traumatic as the eclipse of 1782 where was reported to be so striking children ran after it and tried to catch it with their hands.. it's the same thing that makes the stars twinkle, the band of light as it passes through the atmosphere. the crescent had grown and continued to shrink like annd ember burning itself out at the end before vanishing however this growing threat to produce a final display. these dancing points of light

are the last of the sun's rays. in the closing seconds darkness falls with disorienting rapidity and it can feel as if you are losing your eyesight or your sanity. it doesn't just surround you, it sw swallows you. the very ground seems to give way. in the midafternoo mid afternoo, 1878 as the people of southern wyoming plunged into the shadow they held the sky like none we have ever seen before. thank you. [applause] and i'm happy to take questions about the 2017 eclipse or anything else just one note before you ask your question folks from c-span will want to bring a microphone over to you.r

>> yes, up here in the front. my question is your background is in journalism obviously you've done some work how hard was it to go completely s historian moody and what were the challenges from yourchalle perspective? >> i've worked as a journalist for many years. it was a huge challenge. i didn't know what i was doing it first. i didn't know how to access the papers. i discovered a lot of the documentation was held at thee library of congress, the archives and also these universities across the country. i don't do i need to show i have a phd in history before they let me in, of course not. go to the library of congress, sign up for a researcher card and they let you in. i was holding the papers of alexander graham bell in my hands at one point. it's very exciting. but yes, it was a lot of work

just to figure out where the various archives of relevance were in finding the relevantvanx boxes and going through boxes and boxes of handwritten letters and newspaper articles. first it seemed daunting and overwhelming independent became tremendous fun because it was a treasure hunt. they look through a lot of stu stuff. now that i've done it once, i would like to do it again. i've enjoyed writing about history. i can't wait to read more. i wanted to share i am a third generation alum and we will talk after. so, my grandmother was class of 1914 so she would have loved this. i brought an obituary from 1933

from new york city of my great uncle which says he crossed the ocean 100 times. he was a great enthusiastic student of solar eclipses and observed every one of them, so it's wonderful. >> one of the things i really love about total eclipses and why i think it is a great topic for a work of history is that they are the same experience today we experiencing the same way today as people did back in 1878. it's a shared human experience that crosses generations and centuries. the scientists that came out here in 1978, yes they had their studies they wanted to do but they were just genuinely excited about seeing the total eclipse.

they were junkies like i am. they heade had been to then mediterranean and one in 1869. they just wanted to have another fix of looking at the solar corona which is the most glorious sight in the heavens. i thought that it was so neat the newspapers but it was newsworthy to say about his incredible dedication of going around the world looking at the solar eclipses. >> i hope that my obituary says that, too. [laughter] right up here in the front. .. >> in august 2017 i will be in jackson wyoming. i made my hotel reservation three years ago and i'm glad i did because there isn't anything left unless you are willing to spend a thousand dollars a nig

night. it's a fine place to be because it goes on forever. i'm happy to be in jackson but it's not the best place to be because the mountains tend to create clouds so the odds that they are better over casper or further east o are over western nebraska would be a great place to be. there are places one could get to certainly in a day but expect traffic. there will be more in its borders than ever before. >>

>> i have been looking forward to this a clip for several years and i used to live in nebraska the home of car hinge so i called them about three years ago and said you getting ready for the eclipses and they said was eclipsed? saw have been working with them helping prepare in the state patrol is really concerned because they're estimating half a million people coming in to nebraska. their concern people will just pull off the road and stopped wherever so it will be quite a circus but it is wonderful so many areto willing to share thisare this special time in science. >> we decide to except august 21st nobody will get anything done and it g

will be insanity with heavy traffic anybody going to see the eclipse has to be as self-sufficient as possible have as much gas is you can put in the tank have water and food be prepared to be on your own you may find youil cannot make calls from many parts but that said do not let that dissuade you because it is a rare gift that we get to see and i agree nobody should be the years without seeing at least one. >> you mentioned it hasn't changed much but to speculate i am sure those

scientists that steady the raise that there will be some change with the atmosphere? with the ozone and things like that?. >> you're asking like pollutants in the atmosphere?. >> back then it was important to enable you to determine the elements of the sun that is how helium was found and hydrogen bed don't think that is by the earth's atmosphere but there are going to be scientists studying the sun and there are some things to be learned now is fine-tuning our understanding works with

over 1 million degrees it is unclear where all the energy comes from these of the questions that scientists are trying to answer the back then those are basic questions they're trying to cancer. but there will be some citizen efforts u.s.nm government asked the public to draw the corona in submit to washington and any information was welcomes the there was cry outsourcing today now is called eclipse made a movie project anybody that wants to participate to use your smart phone to take pictures and video of theal

current now. they will be put together into a continuous movie what it looks like over the e entire hour-and-a-half from oregon to south carolina. >> do you know, when a committee was first able to predict the eclipsed?. >> it goes way back to the ancient chinese, unscom of babylonians, they knew how because lerner and solar repeat themselves after a period of 18 years the eclipse will come back but in that one-third of the day it has repeated a 1/3 wave

around the planet so what is coming up in august i saw that see the eclipse in munich 1989 it is part of the same series although a different part of the earth with the path of totality is the same as across the united states so they have figured out that cycle so they knew he probably would put on either side of the planet they didn't understand why they figured w out the pattern not really until the 18th century that scientist could mask the path of totality or that a leader clips would come on case certain date but that path was a detailed understanding but that did

not come along and tell a few centuries ago. >> i work at st. joseph hospital was happy that you mentioned that little nugget of the sisters to that expedition we could not find a lot of information unfortunately but i was happy to see that. >> face to meet you. we have conversed by e-mail so the women were helped of the st. joseph's home at the time spinet a giddily been here five years at that point and are still here today. >> it was run by the sisters charity of leavenworth i also have been in touch with the sisters in the course of writing my book they were

surprised to learn the nuns backed that had helped out last i heard the sisters in leavenworth in the path of totality this year will serve teetoo those who were there in 1878. [laughter] >> you said you focused on those three lives so who did you have to throw out that you found really intriguing? >> there was one story line that i really wanted. i never even mentioned his name. one of the really interesting astronomers his name was david in his earlyy 20s went to see the eclipse

in texas. now zero he went on to become the astronomy professor of interest in massachusetts he would see many around the world and was madly in love with mabel and they were courting loomis writing love letters back and forth he just could not bear to be away from her in texas. on his way back he stopped in the bill and arkansas just because he loved her soso much she had to go there. sova able -- the two of them lived interesting life she is known as the first person puh to edit the poetry of emily

dickinson and very well known to have a torrid affair with emily dickinson's brother. stuff b but that seemed a little too gossipy. he had an interesting life but they had to have something at stake for the eclipse in the end he really didn't but i would have loved to include that whole story bin back about mark twain, you have a couple of mentions but city get interested? i know that i

came in with haley's comment so can you tell us about that?. >> mark twain obviously was very prominent in 1878 unfortunately he was not in america at the time. he was in europe are really hoped he had been but he was back below that after that he cannot with a can netiquette yankee that has a key point and i don't know that eclipse the moreth important the story that he tells where his characters trying to escape by predicting it goes away 50 had an almanac that told him it would have been bin he was really inspired happened to christopher columbus end

having trouble with the native inhabitants. columbus had an almanac that said if you don't help me with what i need to do i will turn them into blood red and sure enough that have been so that is more the inspiration but he also could have been inspiredir even though he did nazi it. i will stick around to sign books. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

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