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Space Oddities: Solar Eclipses in Art and Culture
357 Plays7 months ago
With a focus on material culture, this episode explores humanity's enduring fascination with eclipses through the stories of four objects that span an array of geographical regions and historical time periods.
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Transcript
Introduction to Space Oddities Podcast
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello, listeners. Welcome to Space Oddities, a special podcast episode produced by the IU Indianapolis Arts and Humanities Institute for the 2024 Solar Eclipse. This podcast will take you on a journey through the ways the celestial wonder has captivated people throughout history. I'm Ramani Satishkumar, a freshman computer science major and an intern at the Institute with the First Year Research Immersion Program. I'm Snavey Rakhar, a junior neuroscience major and also a research immersion intern.
00:01:05
Speaker
And I'm Nathan Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute.
Historical and Cultural Impact of Eclipses
00:01:27
Speaker
Together we'll consider these questions and unearth the profound impact of this cosmic phenomenon on human culture. Maybe you already know what causes solar eclipses, but if you want to get the full story about what eclipses actually mean, you're going to want to hear this. Together, over the next hour or so, we're going to consider stories of solar eclipses throughout history, starting all the way back in ancient Greece and making our way into the early 20th century.
00:01:53
Speaker
When you think about eclipses, you probably start thinking about the science first. You might ask questions like, how can I view the eclipse in the safest way? Or what kinds of unique research opportunities do we get during a solar eclipse? These are good questions, and we have a few answers to share. But for most of this podcast, we're going to take a different approach.
00:02:13
Speaker
Rather than talking about eclipses from a purely scientific perspective, we're going to explore the ways eclipses bridge the gap between the humanities and the sciences. As we all see together, a solar eclipse is so much more than a physical cosmic event. Across human history, eclipses have been responsible for unique myths and legends, new forms of cultural exchange, and exciting developments in our understanding of the ancient world.
00:02:38
Speaker
To tell the story, we're going to focus on five objects that demonstrate how people have used eclipses to make sense of the world around them. When we call these objects oddities in our David Bowie inspired title, we don't mean that they're weird. Instead, we want to call attention to their uniqueness and to the ways that they inspire curiosity.
00:02:58
Speaker
Join us on a journey from some of the earliest records of eclipses all the way to the first time anyone caught a solar eclipse on film. Together, let's explore how people have used cosmic events to understand and explore the world around them.
Science of Solar Eclipses
00:03:19
Speaker
But first, let's talk about the basics. When we see a solar eclipse in the sky, what exactly is happening? In order to get the best possible answer to this question, we sat down with Dr. Katie Pilachowski, the Kirkwood Chair of the IU Bloomington Department of Astronomy. Here's what she had to say. We know that the Earth orbits the sun. We know that the Earth spins on its axis. And we know that the moon orbits around the Earth. Those are all very simple facts that in principle would
00:03:48
Speaker
make eclipses happen easily and understandably. As the moon passes in its orbit between the earth and the sun, the moon's shadow falls across the earth. And because the moon is very small and very far away compared to the earth, the spot of that shadow is very small on the face of the earth, roughly 100 miles wide. And as the moon moves in its orbit and the earth turns
00:04:16
Speaker
on its axis as it rotates just around as it does every day, that the spot of that shadow sweeps an arc across the surface of the earth. So people who happen to be standing in that shadow will see the moon completely cover the sun. So that means it gets dark. There's no sunlight that falling in that spot of the earth. We can see the sky as it would be. If it were nighttime, we could see the planets
00:04:44
Speaker
In the sky, we might be able to see a comet up there. We can see the beautiful corona that surrounds the sun that we normally cannot see because of the very bright daylight sky. So it's an amazing experience. If the sky is clear, all five of the classical naked eye planets will be up in the sky alongside the sun. Jupiter will be high above the sun toward the southeast.
00:05:13
Speaker
Mercury will be there closer to the sun, but not visible because Mercury will be located between us and the sun. So we're looking at the side of Mercury that's in the dark, no sunlight on it. So it will be dark and we won't be able to see it naked eye, but possibly could see it with binoculars. And then below the sun will be Venus and Mars and Saturn, all there in the sky, headed down toward the West Southwest from the sun. It's a big arc across the sky from Jupiter all the way
00:05:43
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to Saturn and Mars, but they will be, those four will be visible and Mercury will be there. And also, even though you've heard it everywhere and from everybody else, we're going to remind you not to forget your eye protection when viewing an eclipse. We asked Dr. Ed Rhodes at IU-Indy to explain exactly what happens during an eclipse that can have such huge consequences for your vision.
00:06:07
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The reason the photosphere is not safe to look at, especially during the eclipse, is that the surface brightness, the amount of light you get per unit of area of the surface, is extremely high. And if you were in space, you would have to go way out, I haven't done the math, but past the orbit of Saturn, before you could really look at the sun with your naked eye and it wouldn't hurt.
00:06:29
Speaker
because at some point the resolution of your eye would be a bigger angle than the angular size of the Sun, and once you got past that point you would still be able to look at it with your naked eye, but until that point you can't in space.
Ancient Predictions and Technologies
00:06:52
Speaker
Some of the earliest recorded information we have about eclipses was produced by Babylonian astronomers.
00:06:58
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The work that they started was carried forward in ancient Greece, as astronomers moved from simply predicting eclipses to actually modeling the heavens. Because of an accidental archaeological find over a century ago, eclipses played a role in a discovery that permanently changed our knowledge of the ancient world's technological capabilities. Right at the turn of the 20th century, a group of Greek sponge divers waded out a storm off the small island of Antikythera, between the island of Crete and the Greek mainland.
00:07:28
Speaker
When the storm was over, the divers thought they may as well see if there were any sponges down there in the Antikytherin waters. Why waste a trip, after all? A young diver named Elias Stadiatus was dispatched overboard to look below, and when he resurfaced, he was babbling incoherently about piles of naked dead people that had sunk to the bottom of the sea. The naked dead people turned out to be sculptures from the era of Greek antiquity.
00:07:56
Speaker
Any shipwreck full of treasure makes for a fascinating tale, but this particular wreck contained an object the likes of which has never been seen before or since. An ancient analog computer designed, at least in part, to predict eclipses. Originally fished out of the water simply because it was a green lump that probably contained copper, the Antikythera mechanism changed everything we thought we knew about the ancient Greeks.
00:08:22
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Historians had been well aware for some time that the Greeks knew about basic gear and wheel mechanisms. The famous mathematician Archimedes was known for inventing a gear-driven screw for pumping water efficiently. But the Antikythera mechanism was revealed over time to contain some of the most complex ancient machinery ever discovered. Hand-tooled gears with teeth that were a millimeter wide or less
00:08:45
Speaker
A find of this magnitude was like discovering a working flying machine from the Middle Ages. Nobody would have believed that the ancients could have made such a thing until we saw it for ourselves. Upon seeing it for the first time, the sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke said that if the insight of the Greeks had matched their ingenuity, the Industrial Revolution would have happened in the early 400s, and that we would now not merely be pottering around the moon, as he put it.
00:09:14
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we would have reached the nearer stars. For decades, the use and purpose of the Antikythera mechanism was shrouded in mystery. The fragile apparatus decayed over time into 82 fragments of varying sizes, and while it was possible to tell that these pieces formed some kind of calculating machine, the definitive answers didn't arrive until Dr. Tony Freeth and his team of experts were able to take modern 3D x-rays of the mechanism in 2005.
00:09:41
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Previous researchers had postulated that the Antikythera mechanism was used to predict the positions of the sun, the moon, and the five planets that the Greeks knew about, but the discovery that the mechanism could also predict eclipses showed the machine's true sophistication.
00:09:56
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As Dr. Freeth reports in an article for Scientific American, the 3D x-rays revealed a large gear with 223 teeth on it. That number, 223, corresponds to the ancient Babylonian eclipse prediction calendar known as the Saros Cycle.
00:10:11
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The Babylonians and the Greeks had both figured out that the Sun and the Moon and the Earth returned to about the same position, creating a nearly identical eclipse over the course of 223 lunar months. So the presence of this gear meant that the Antikythera mechanism could be used to calculate the precise dates of multiple kinds of astronomical events, from the locations of the Sun, the Moon and the planets at any given time, to solar and lunar eclipses, and of course the dates of the Olympic Games.
00:10:40
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All these calculations were completed with a simple turn of a single crank on the outside of a box-shaped structure, which moved three dials that were on the front and the back of the machine. We do not know for sure who specifically built the Antikythera mechanism, but there is evidence to suggest that Archimedes himself was involved, at least by way of inspiration.
00:11:02
Speaker
The Antikythera shipwreck took place between 40 and 60 BCE, which was more than a century after Archimedes died, but textual evidence suggests that he was involved in the creation of similar mechanisms that could have inspired the Antikythera device. The Roman scholar Cicero, who was alive at the time of the shipwreck,
00:11:20
Speaker
Records in his work, The Republic, that Archimedes created a globe that, as he records, had worked out how a single rotation could reproduce the diverse paths of the various bodies with their different speeds. When the sphere was operated, the result was that the moon was as many revolutions behind the sun on Archimedes' brass contraption as it was days behind it in the sky. Hence, the same eclipse of the sun took place in the sky and on the globe, and the moon then came round to the cone-shaped shadow of the earth
00:11:50
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cast by the Sun from the opposite side. The Antikythera mechanism is a box, not a globe, and the device described here does not quite match with other things that we know about the mechanism, but Cicero has given us enough here to reasonably conclude that Archimedes was responsible for some of the technology that made the mechanism possible, and that he too was interested in being able to predict eclipses.
00:12:14
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Today, the Antikythera mechanism persists in pop culture as the so-called Dial of Destiny, sought by Indiana Jones in his most recent film, That Name. In the movie, the mechanism is a time-traveling device that Archimedes designed so that people from the future could come and save him during the Siege of Syracuse, a historical event at which Archimedes is reported to have been killed.
00:12:37
Speaker
The historical Antikythera mechanism, however, was meant to do something arguably more interesting than time travel. It was meant to make the skies, the movements of the zodiac, the acts of the gods, understandable to humans. Writing about the work of Archimedes a few centuries later, the Roman poet Claudian records the following statement from Jupiter, the chief of the Roman gods.
00:13:02
Speaker
Has the power of mortal effort gone so far? Is my handiwork now mimicked in a fragile globe? An old man of Syracuse has imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods.
00:13:18
Speaker
Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses of the stars and actuates the lifelike mass with definite motions. A false zodiac runs through a year of its own and a toy moon waxes and wanes month by month. Now bold invention rejoices to make its own heaven revolve and sets the stars in motion by human wit.
00:13:41
Speaker
In other words, a machine that could predict eclipses was so much more than a convenient way to plan for cosmic spectacles. The Antikythera mechanism and its forerunners literally brought the harmony of the heavens down to Earth and put it in human hands.
00:14:15
Speaker
Now let's move forward a few centuries into the Middle Ages. A thorough researcher can find a law about what experts in the ancient and medieval world were thinking about eclipses. But what about the laypeople? We had an opportunity to sit down with Professor Deborah Delianis from the IU Bloomington Department of History, and we asked her what the experience of an eclipse could have been like for a person who didn't have access to expert knowledge about astronomy from the state or the church.
Cultural Interpretations Across Eras
00:14:45
Speaker
The period I know best is the early Middle Ages. For sure, first of all, people knew that eclipses happened. I mean, it wasn't just like out of the blue, you're just going along and suddenly the sun is dark. People knew that there was such a thing as an eclipse.
00:15:01
Speaker
Some very highly technical people going back into the ancient world, I think, could predict them. But the knowledge and the prediction of them was not widespread. But now you have to be living under a rock not to know that there's going to be an eclipse. That was not the case for most of history.
00:15:17
Speaker
One thing that I don't know and I am interested in is the development of things like almanacs. Almanacs I think used to include eclipse predictions, which changes the way people react to them, if at least some people are not going to be surprised. But even if you know it's coming, you still might interpret it as a sign or a portent of something.
00:15:44
Speaker
We know that in the early Middle Ages, histories often say the year, I'm just trying to pick one, 664, there was an eclipse of the sun and the next year, you know, the next month the plague came and devastated the region. Which implies that people thought that there was a connection. At least some people.
00:16:03
Speaker
the way it's written it could just be there was an eclipse of the sun and the plague came and you know so it's not necessarily one-to-one but that's the impression that we have is that people did the the one in 1185 in Russia is interesting because
00:16:21
Speaker
From what I have read about it, Prince Igor was going to attack the Polovetsians, and then there was an eclipse. And his wife said, oh, this is a bad omen. You shouldn't attack them. But he did anyway and was defeated. It just so happens that the next place we're going to look offers the perfect example of how important it was to know whether or not an eclipse was about to take place.
00:16:46
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Since as the tragic case of Prince Igor demonstrates, under conditions that were unstable enough, an ill-timed eclipse could lead people to question the stability of their government and the capability of their leaders.
00:16:58
Speaker
The next step of our journey takes us to early modern China, where a special set of astronomical devices took center stage in a world that was undergoing significant changes. Originally built in 1442, the Beijing Ancient Observatory is one of the oldest and best preserved astronomical observation sites in the world.
00:17:17
Speaker
Surprisingly, this observatory contained no telescopes at all, even though it was an active operation from the 15th century until 1927. Instead of telescopes, the observatory is home to a broad array of instruments with imposing names like azimuth, theodolite, and ecliptic armilla. The observatory actually has different sets of instruments. One set from an early period that was designed and built by Chinese astronomers alone
00:17:43
Speaker
and another set that was produced in collaboration with Jesuit missionaries. Ultimately, the need to predict solar eclipses would set the stage for an experiment in cultural exchange that would change the way an entire nation tracked its time. Because the Chinese emperor derived his authority from his relationship to the heavens, cosmic events like solar eclipses played a major role in ancient and early modern Chinese culture.
00:18:09
Speaker
As in ancient Greece and medieval Europe, there is very little distinction made between astronomy and astrology. Events that took place in the night sky were assumed to have an immediate relationship to social and political matters. Stories circulate of Chinese folk legends in which a dragon devours the sun during a solar eclipse. And just like any other myth, people probably understood this story in many different ways, some literal and some metaphorical.
00:18:34
Speaker
There's evidence suggesting that court astronomers knew the true cause of eclipses as early as the year 20 BCE, but astronomical knowledge in Imperial China was often guarded closely, leaving the field open for various interpretations of the event by laypeople. In fact, as Xiaoyuan Jiang reports in Chinese Astrology and Astronomy and Outside History,
00:18:56
Speaker
Privately practicing astronomy was considered a felony until late in the Ming Dynasty during the 1600s. This was because solar eclipses were generally taken as signs of upcoming political unrest, and they could also be seen as omens that there was something lacking in the emperor's virtue, among other reasons. Combined with some other misfortune or problematic matter of state, an eclipse could even call an emperor's right to rule into question.
00:19:22
Speaker
It was therefore really important for emperors from across Imperial China's many dynasties to be able to know when an eclipse was on the way so as to get out ahead of the potential consequences. Unfortunately, while spheres and stardials of the Beijing Ancient Observatory were able to give the accurate locations of some planetary bodies at a given time, they were not very efficient at predicting solar eclipses.
00:19:45
Speaker
As Liu Lingfeng from the University of Science and Technology of China records, the Dutong Li, or the official calendar of the Ming Dynasty, was often wrong about solar eclipses. From 1610 to 1629, the Dutong Li repeatedly missed the date or the time for solar eclipses, prompting officials from all levels of the imperial government to make impassioned pleas for reform.
00:20:08
Speaker
Administrative squabbling within the Bureau of Astronomy went on until in 1629, the recently appointed Chongjian emperor had had enough. He said, the solar eclipse prediction by the Bureau of Astronomy is inaccurate again. Astronomy is important for the whole country. This mistake can only be excused one time. In the future, you should calculate carefully. If there's a mistake next time, you'll be punished severely. It was time for a new calendar.
00:20:37
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The new calendar had to get solar eclipses right. Ultimately, it would be created with an unlikely group of collaborators, Jesuit missionaries.
00:20:46
Speaker
The Jesuits decided that the best way to gain as many new converts as quickly as possible would be to get the attention of the emperor's court. So, instead of demanding immediate and violent conversion to Christianity, the Jesuit missionaries sought to prove the superiority of Christianity by sharing their knowledge about astronomy, geometry, and mathematics, including the astronomical system developed by Tycho Brahe, which allowed for more accurate eclipse predictions.
00:21:12
Speaker
One of the most important adopters of the new science was a man who was such a polymath that historians would one day compare him to Leonardo da Vinci, a statesman named Xu Guangqi. Xu Guangqi had the open-mindedness to consider new ideas and the erudition to put them into practice.
00:21:30
Speaker
After translating Euclid's Elements with Matteo Ricci, one of the earliest Jesuit missionaries to China, Xu was put in charge of developing the new calendar, one that would be able to, among other things, predict eclipses accurately. During that infamously botched 1629 eclipse, the official imperial record says that Xu had used methods he learned from the Jesuits to successfully predict the correct date and time when the official astronomers had failed.
00:21:56
Speaker
So, the emperor created a separate calendar bureau that could operate without any meddling from the frustrated bureau of astronomy, and he put Xu in charge. The result was one of the first major collaborations between Chinese and European scientists, the Chongzhen Treatises on Calendrical Astronomy.
00:22:14
Speaker
Working with Jesuit missionaries, Johan Schreck and Johan Adam Schall von Bell, Xu and his contemporaries created a hundred volume work that included translations of the works of Euclid, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Brahe. At about the same time, the Jesuits were also bringing in new astronomical instruments, but still no telescopes that can still be viewed on the Beijing Observatory grounds today.
00:22:38
Speaker
The court's experts in Chinese and Islamic astronomy were not impressed with Xu's interest in the ideas that the Jesuits had imported, especially if it meant that he was going to be more successful than they had been. This resulted in a kind of cosmic battle royale, in which Xu and the experts in other types of astronomy employed their competing methods to see who could predict the next eclipse with the most accuracy.
00:23:01
Speaker
According to the historical record, Xu came out victorious, although Lu Lingfeng also points out that there's reason to believe that the emperor had already made up his mind about the new astronomical ideas before the contest. The calendar described in the Chongzhen treatises would remain in use for more than two centuries, until it was modified in 1914.
00:23:21
Speaker
In this complex story, the solar eclipse raises questions about political power, cultural imperialism, and globalism during the Renaissance. The Jesuit's private records show that they frequently had condescending or even hostile attitudes towards Chinese people who showed no interest in Christianity, and it could be argued that, in their single-minded focus on conversion, they were sharing knowledge under some false pretenses.
00:23:44
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On the other hand, thinkers like Xu Huangqi, who reportedly practiced his own blend of Christianity and Confucianism, were willing to fearlessly challenge prevailing ideas in the name of scientific accuracy, even if that meant accepting new things from people whose motives were not always totally clear. Today, the Beijing Ancient Observatory remains a symbol of the complicated ways in which knowledge comes to be exchanged across countries and cultures, and the ways in which solar eclipses can take center stage in that process.
00:24:24
Speaker
As we've seen so far, the question of who was allowed to have what kinds of knowledge about eclipses was at the center of cultures and governments throughout history. We're going to turn now to 19th century Paris, where I'll introduce us to a model that made the science of eclipses available to the masses.
00:24:42
Speaker
Eclipses have been weaving stories in the night sky, captivating the human spirit for centuries. In this exploration, we peel back the layers of time to uncover the intricate connections between visual arts and the enlightening world of scientific illustrations. This part of our journey is centered around a solar and lunar eclipse model created by the French instrument maker Henri Robert aiming to reveal the impact it has had on human behavior and on our understanding of celestial phenomena.
00:25:17
Speaker
Eclipses are more than just cosmic events. They have played a vital role in shaping human behavior and beliefs.
00:25:24
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The middle of the 19th century was also a time when purely religious interpretations of celestial events were beginning to give way in the face of scientific explanations, which is demonstrated, at least in part, by the fact that skilled craftspeople started making models that could explain the basic science behind eclipses to everyday people. Unlike the main character in Mark Twain's 19th century novel, a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court,
00:25:53
Speaker
who uses his knowledge of eclipses to fool the Knights into believing that he has supernatural powers, models and illustrations serve to make the power of scientific knowledge available to everyone. In earlier centuries, painters sought to capture the beauty and significance of eclipses.
00:26:13
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Masterpieces like Cosmos Damien Assam's vision of Saint Benedict and Raphael Isaac and Rebecca Fresco in the Vatican Palace allude to symbolic elements related to eclipses. Scientific illustrations paved the way for a new understanding of celestial phenomenon, but they were not really meant for everyday people.
00:26:35
Speaker
certainly not for anyone who didn't know Latin. These intricate depictions marked by precision, accuracy, and a departure from past beliefs became the visual language of a growing scientific enlightenment. Transitioning to the modern era, the solar and lunar eclipse model by Henri Robert does not include any religious symbolism.
00:26:56
Speaker
Acquired at the 1867 Universal Exposition in Paris, this model is a different kind of symbolic relic, marrying both the scientific knowledge of its time and the collective imagination of societies grappling with the mysteries of the unknown.
00:27:12
Speaker
Serving as a tangible link between the historical depictions and the scientific advancements of its time, this model invites us to witness the evolution of artistic representation and scientific curiosity. In its modernism, it offers a conceptual exploration of eclipse dynamics, bridging artistic expression and the advancement in scientific understanding.
00:27:35
Speaker
Henri Robert's Eclipse Model, which is in the collections of the British Science Museum Group, is a beautifully simple object that not only represents a convergence of art and science, but also becomes a testament to the intellectual revolution that was sweeping through the cultural landscape in 19th century Europe.
00:27:57
Speaker
Mounted on a carved wooden stand, this elegant model shows the earth, the moon, and the sun mounted on a brass mechanism. On this model, the moon is attached to the earth by a brass wheel, which connects to the earth and the center.
00:28:15
Speaker
A fixed ring around the wheel shows the sign of the zodiac, perhaps demonstrating what constellations the moon would appear alongside during a given eclipse. By turning a knob on the side, a user could operate a small police system that would pull the moon around the earth while maintaining the roughly 5 degree angle at which the moon actually orbits the earth in space.
00:28:40
Speaker
These scientific illustrations challenged existing beliefs and guided a shift in the perception of the cosmos. Eclipses, once mysterious and often feared, were now demystified through the lens of scientific inquiry. This change in perception not only impacted the scientific community, but also spread throughout society, influencing the way people understood and celebrated celestial events.
00:29:06
Speaker
including the annular eclipse that was visible in some parts of Europe just one month before the 1867 Paris Exposition. This exposition, also called World's Fair, took place during a time of remarkable scientific advancement, especially in industrial technology.
00:29:24
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Since there was no specific portion of the exposition dedicated to astronomy, it is difficult to say precisely where this eclipse model would have belonged. But since it was an educational tool, it is nice to imagine it belonging to the display group articles whose special purpose was to improve the physical and moral conditions of the people.
00:29:48
Speaker
While this model may have seemed small in comparison to the gigantic machines that visitors had to walk past to see it, it reflected a similar idea that scientific knowledge was worth sharing with everyone in a comprehensible way. While we do not know very much about the model's maker,
00:30:05
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There is a French book titled Studies on Various Questions in Watchmaking that was written by a person named Henri Robert that published in Paris in 1852. If we accept that this could possibly have been the same person,
00:30:22
Speaker
It is easy to imagine the connection between telling terrestrial time and crafting a mechanism that could track celestial movements more complex than the Earth's daily revolution on its axis. Just like a watch, a model of an eclipse brings the movement of celestial bodies down to Earth, turning them into something predictable enough that they can be handled in the hand.
00:30:46
Speaker
Robert's model was not as sophisticated as the other space oddities, but it didn't have to be, because it served a different purpose. In tracking the rich history of visual depictions of eclipses and the pivotal role played by the solar and lunar eclipse model by Henri Robert, we discovered a connection between art, human behavior, and scientific enlightenment.
00:31:11
Speaker
As we gaze upon this modern masterpiece, we recognize its artistic brilliance and its pivotal role in bridging the realms of our human imagination and the transformative scientific understanding that forever changed our views of the boundless celestial mysteries.
Eclipses in Modern Media
00:31:38
Speaker
Our collective fascination with solar eclipses also intertwines with the archives of early cinema. Travel back with me to the 20th century where capturing a moment didn't merely mean the click of a camera. In a time where scientific understanding of this astronomical event was still limited in important ways, a visionary by the name of Neville Mascaline captured the magnificence of the solar eclipse on film.
00:32:01
Speaker
Join us as we delve into the story of this trailblazer who proved that emerging technology could help us recognize solar eclipses as a scientific event after the eras where astrological interpretations took precedence. How did a Victorian magician become the first person to capture a solar eclipse on film? The fascinating story of John Neville Mascoline, a popular magician in late 19th century England,
00:32:27
Speaker
combines the intersection of art and science. Masculine was not only a master of illusions, but an aspiring astronomer as well. His passion for astronomy and his keen interest in filmmaking led him to combine these two fields to capture one of Earth's most spectacular magic tricks, a solar eclipse.
00:32:46
Speaker
However, masculine's path to filming this phenomenon was hardly straightforward as filmmaking technology was at its infancy and solar eclipses are only visible in a small area of the earth at any given time. But why would a magician want to explore filmmaking and more surprisingly astronomy? To unravel this mystery, we need to delve into the Victorian era.
00:33:09
Speaker
Indeed, technology and magic were blending seamlessly during this era. For instance, it was around this time that an Irish-Italian engineer by the name of Guglielmo Marconi patented wireless telegraph technology, which coincided with the rise in spiritualism and paranormal beliefs as people encountered messages that could travel through thin air for the first time.
00:33:31
Speaker
Mascaline was firmly against such spiritualists and wanted to expose their deceptions in order to establish magic as a science. He recognized the value in the newly emerging film technology in order to help him do this, so perhaps it is not so surprising that he became an early adopter of this medium.
00:33:49
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Masculine's interest in astronomy and film also seems to be a family trait. Masculine's father, who was also a magician and early filmmaker, claimed to be a descendant of a different novel, Masculine, the fifth British astronomer royal in the early 19th century.
00:34:05
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This explains why Mascoline chose his rather unusual career path. Along with being a magician and film pioneer, he was also a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and sought to merge these interests in a groundbreaking manner. Mascoline's magical career truly soared after joining forces with a magician by the name of George Alfred Cook, with whom he created the popular show titled Mascoline and Cook.
00:34:29
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The reputation of their show earned them a prestigious spot at the Egyptian Hall, London's oldest and most famous magic theatre. It was here that Maskelene encountered filmmaking as David Devont, another popular magician, was working on introducing these living photographs to magic shows. Soon, Maskelene started incorporating trick films into his performances to wow his audience.
00:34:52
Speaker
However, his fascination with astronomy and interest in filmmaking led him to seek something unconventional to display at his shows. He also wanted to prove that the emerging film technology could advance the field of astronomy. Thus began Maskeline's journey to capture a solar eclipse on film, which was undeniably no easy feat. Maskeline faced many challenges, but none of them were as daunting as the primitive film technology of the time.
00:35:18
Speaker
Film was a difficult medium to work with, as the slightest mistake could ruin the footage. Capturing the sun on film was a near impossible feat. Masculine had to account for possible damage to his equipment, as well as overexposing his film. There was no room for mistakes either, as he had a very limited time frame to capture the elusive solar eclipse, and missing this window would mean waiting for another opportunity that might take years.
00:35:43
Speaker
Mascoline created this footage with a device called a kinematograph. This was an early motion picture camera that utilized a series of photographs to imitate a video. The film frames were held behind the lens using a fork of sorts. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, this device could record up to 40 frames a second and the processed film was rapidly passed between a viewing lens and an electric incandescent lamp inside the device. This allowed for the projection of the film onto a screen.
00:36:12
Speaker
To record the eclipse, Masculine needed to devise a special telescopic adapter for his kinematographs so that the film would not get overexposed. Masculine's invention was essentially a metal plate with a small hole that acted as a pinhole camera, and many people still use pinhole cameras for viewing eclipses today. This device allowed him to reduce the light entering the camera, a simple yet effective solution that allowed him to capture a scientific marvel.
00:36:40
Speaker
Now all he had to do was wait for an eclipse to occur, and the opportunity presented itself in India in 1898. Excitedly, he entrusted his kinematograph equipment with a loyal friend and his daughter, who made the long journey to India to capture the celestial spectacle. However, in an unfortunate turn of events, upon the successful filming of the solar eclipse, the film canister was stolen on the way back.
00:37:05
Speaker
Masculine's second attempt, thankfully, was far more successful. This time around, in an expedition sponsored by the British Astronomical Society, he traveled to North Carolina to capture the solar eclipse that occurred in 1900 on May 28. His special telescopic adapter allowed him to capture this wonder on film and finally reveal it to the world.
00:37:28
Speaker
Masculine's love for astronomy and filmmaking combined allowed him to accomplish this ambitious feat. Perhaps his years as a magician gave him the relentless energy to master this trick. With the first film recording of The Solar Eclipse, Masculine proved that the emerging film technology could be used not only for entertainment but for the advancement of science,
00:37:50
Speaker
just like today where we still experience the solar eclipse both as an entertaining spectacle and an opportunity to increase our knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics.
00:38:14
Speaker
Today, a person who goes out of their way to see as many eclipses as possible is called an umbraphile, which means someone who loves shadows.
Eclipses as Communal Events
00:38:23
Speaker
We may not have physically traveled around the world to see eclipses happen, but we have certainly chased them in time, all the way from the ancient past to the invention of cinematography.
00:38:33
Speaker
The idea of loving a shadow may seem strange at first. After all, shadows obscure our vision and hide things from us. They sometimes make it hard for us to know where we are going. But the appreciation of shadows is a lot like the work we do when we study history. Since we do not have access to events as they happen, we rely on their reflections in books and objects, in photos and movies and works of art. In other words, maybe a bit of the unprofile spirit is alive in everyone who seeks to understand the past.
00:39:02
Speaker
Eclipses would have been among the first large-scale communal experiences that early humans had, since nobody could miss the giant spectacle happening in the sky. Since those ancient days, eclipses have continued to bring people together in surprising ways, getting tangled up in everything from the divine laws of fate to political instability to the human desire for wonder expressed in a magic show.
00:39:25
Speaker
As for what the 2024 Eclipse will come to symbolize, well, we'll have to create that for ourselves.
00:40:04
Speaker
Okay, you ready? Three, two, one. Thank you for listening! Is that good? Are we happy with that?