Thomas Hockey

“All the Sky's an Eclipse, and All Those Below Merely Observers”:  One TSE Encountered in Many Ways

Abstract

A total eclipse of the Sun spans a continent.  North America.   Yet it is not 2024, it is 1869, a time when few of those in the path of totality knew what to expect.  The US history books say that the big news event of that summer was the completion of a coast-to-coast railroad.  In reality it was a total solar eclipse. 

I share the story of seven solar eclipse watchers, each of whom experienced the phenomenon in a different manner.  They are drawn from the ranks of professional astronomers on expedition; the cadre of Golden Age, well-equipped amateur astronomers; and the public.  Some of the characters in my “play” you may have heard of, others likely not.  In telling it, I deconstruct a particular three minutes in time that changed lives.  Perhaps audience members will relate to one or more of these highly disparate people.

BIO

The famous 7 March 1970 eclipse of the Sun inspired Thomas Hockey to pursue a career in astronomy.  Today he is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Northern Iowa.  One of his ten books on the history of astronomy received the American Astronomical Society’s Osterbrock Book Award.  

Hockey has observed ten total solar eclipses and lives on the path of the 7 August 1869 TSE.  Life events intersected at the publication of his latest volume, America’s First Eclipse Chasers:  Stories of Science, Planet Vulcan, Quicksand, and the Railroad Boom (Springer 2023), with a Foreword by Jay Pasachoff.