The last time Arkansas lay in the prime viewing zone for a total solar eclipse was the afternoon of June 8, 1918.
Today's eclipse merely will darken Arkansas skies from about 11:47 a.m. to about 2:46 p.m. But in 1918, residents of 10 southern counties could reasonably expect a blackout as the moon's shadow swept from Oregon to Florida. Newspaper maps predicted darkness would move from the central west below Fort Smith to Lake Village in the southeast.
Were people excited? Their most recent solar experience, in May 1900, had been but a partial obscuration early in the morning and under partly cloudy skies, but "it was an event well worth the loss of sleep," as the Arkansas Gazette reported the next day.
The smoked glass was a favorite method of looking at the sun without straining the eyes and the consequence was that persons with smut on their faces were the rule rather than the exception yesterday.
That is the only mention of solar eye harm I found in the 1900 archive.
Certainly the state's newspaper editors were excited in 1918. With small stories published here and there from January on, the Gazette and Arkansas Democrat told readers what to expect.
On June 5, the Democrat published a map of the moon-shadow path under a slightly wrong headline: "Sun's Eclipse Coming on June 8; Next One Due 3 Centuries Hence."
But readers were advised to protect their eyes. And they learned that the astronomy department at Henderson-Brown College in Arkadelphia planned to remain on campus after the end of the term for a viewing event. Also, the president of Ouachita Baptist College had invited scientists in other states to set up telescopes in the school tower.
In Little Rock, the ladies who served tea on Sunday afternoons at the Soldiers' Club, Second and Main streets, canceled for June 8 so the men could view the event from Camp Pike.
In more than one story, the Gazette quoted some unnamed joker claiming that the eclipse was being organized by Hot Springs convention planners for the entertainment of the National Editorial Association:
He is authority for the additional detail that the local committee in Hot Springs will build a large platform for the visiting editors upon which they may stand to view the eclipse, and that none without badges will be admitted to the enclosure, as the eclipse is especially for the visiting scribes and not for the common people.
By coincidence, 1918 also was the year daylight saving time first became U.S. law, briefly. A story in the Gazette on May 19, 1918, suggests a mild misunderstanding of the newfangled "Fast Time":
Eclipse of Sun Is
Postponed an Hour
Denver, Colo. -- The total eclipse of the sun forecast to occur on June 8 has been postponed for one hour. This is not the result of any error in calculations of the astronomers nor is it due to an order by modern Joshua that the sun stand still, but is chargeable to the operations of the daylight saving law as a result of which the clocks throughout the United States were set forward an hour on March 31. ...
This change in hours will not affect the astronomers, however, as their clocks still are adjusted to standard sun time.
Feel free to believe that was received as wit.
Photographs also will be taken of the sky in the region of the sun in search of any stray comet and also of the mythical planet Vulcan, which some astronomers have asserted has its orbit so close to the sun that it can be seen only during an eclipse. The existence of such a planet is doubted by most observers, however.
(By the way, the part of the Standard Time Act of 1918 that imposed daylight saving time was repealed in August 1919, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto.)
The Gazette was a morning paper, and so the advice it delivered June 8 was worried but hopeful:
H.S. Cole of the local Weather Bureau says that everyone who has a camera should try to get a picture of the eclipse, in the hope that a few good ones may be secured. Time exposures are necessary to get the best results ... .
No one should look at the eclipse of the sun today, except through smoked or colored glasses, Dr. C.W. Garrison, state health officer, said last night.
But the Democrat was an afternoon newspaper, and so the word its readers got from Cole was that skies were so hazy he didn't expect any good photos.
June 9, the Gazette reported that clouds had disappointed astronomers in Denver, but those in Baker, Ore., had better luck. From Little Rock, which had only expected a 96 percent sun-blotting, the headline was "Clouds Obstruct View of Eclipse":
This unusual darkness lasted so short a time that it was evidently due to the eclipse instead of being caused by the cloud banks which had been in the sky all afternoon.
From Camden, "Eclipse Is Obscured":
At the moment of totality it was light enough to read newspapers with ease in the open air. Local "sharks" figured that the cloud blanket refracted light from outside the shadow to within, contending that it would have been darker had the weather been clear. Many hundred spectators, armed with smoked glasses, patiently waited out the two hours, hoping to see something of the big show. The only phenomenon which they really observed was the passage of the totality shadow on the clouds.
But an unnamed reporter had quite a poetic experience at Arkadelphia:
Just at the moment of total obscurity the clouds interfered and the view of the sun was cut off. However, the effects were startling. Darkness came on very suddenly and lights flashed on over the city. Automobiles switched on their headlights. Lightning bugs quickly roused from the grass and scattered abroad. An old hen, with her little chickens, beat a quick retreat for the coop and she was all fussed up about being caught away from home by the darkness. Calf bleatings were answered by the low of the cow. To all appearances it was night.
The shadow came swiftly so that one could detect its growing darkness. To have not known the cause of the phenomena would have been very disconcerting.
So stock those images away for next time. Arkansas is to experience a total solar eclipse April 8, 2024. The shadow path then will differ from today's and also from the one in 1918: It will move from southwest to northeast across the state.
Next week: Man, Supposed to Be Slain, Is Found
ActiveStyle on 08/21/2017