Solar Eclipse 1900 by Nevil Maskelyne
A Solar Eclipse occurs when the moon passes the Earth directly, obscuring the Sun, making the day feel like night. In 1900, a British stage magician and a fellow of the British Royal Astronomical Society (F.R.A.S.) Nevil Maskelyne traveled to Wadesboro, Anson County, North Carolina, on his second attempt to film such phenomena. The footage he collected was rediscovered and screened in 2019, and is now what British historians are calling the oldest filmic astronomical record in existence, which is available to screen here.
May 28th, 1900 had good weather, which allowed many scientists and spectators to view the phenomena with ease. The planets Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter were visible according to local news sources. The event began on the eastern seaboard at 7:45 am and reached its maximum at 8:20 am. The "corona" was the main attraction. It looks like a perfect pitch-black sphere, surrounded by a glowing halo, which is only visible to the naked eye during only a total eclipse. The Sun's totality, covered by the moon, which shrouded the Earth in darkness, lasted for a full 1 minute and 30 seconds. The event left its spectators gathered on roofs and in the middle of the streets with shock and awe, and birds stopped singing. A group of local dogs even halted eating their breakfasts. Many American scientific organizations like Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic, and researchers, including Samuel Langley, a famous solar physicist, were among the spectators in North Carolina that day.
For weeks, newspapers, both local and international, covered how and when to see the Eclipse. An article dated a month before the event, titled 'The Coming Solar Eclipse' by The Mercury United Kingdom, outlined the British Royal Astronomical Society's most recent meeting at Sion College. They were discussing upcoming arrangements to see the Eclipse. Small groups from the R.A.S. would travel to Algiers, Spain, Portugal, and North Carolina to match the Sun's path. According to a Miss Bacon, Mr. Masklyne, assisted by his wife Mrs. Maskylene, "would direct the telescopic kinematograph upon corona through totality, and expose a long film in an ordinary kinematograph camera directed towards a chosen point of the landscape for a period commencing somewhat before and terminating somewhat after totality." Miss Bacon, also a member of the association, would be accompanying her father, the President, a Reverend Bacon, along with the Maskelyne’s to North Carolina.
There were to be numerous scientific tests performed during this phenomenon. Photographically, they would compare the brightness of the Sun during the corona with the brightness of a full moon and "expose to the zenith several minutes before, during and after totality, a long sensitive film continuously driven in a specially designed automatic instrument." And "By means of a kite, he would compare during the eclipse the temperature at an altitude of a few hundred feet with that on the ground." There would also be many photographic experiments performed similarly to the R.A.S. first attempt at capturing a moving solar eclipse in Buxar India, 1898. The photographs he had taken, unfortunately, were lost during the journey home. Maskelyne and the members of his expedition used a variety of cameras and lenses to capture the event. Identical twin cameras used in 1898 were present. One small lens of one and a half-inch aperture, with nine-inch focal length was used with twenty-second exposures. A pair of rectilinear lenses of eighteen-inch focus, which exposed the entirety of the Eclipse. They took photos before and after the totality as well. A Mr. Crommelin Dallmeyer had a telephoto lens, with an inch and a half aperture and an adjustable focal length, which he had made eighty inches in hopes of taking a large-scale image of the corona.
Nevil Maskelyne announced he would be debuting an "almost novel astronomical instrument, in the shape of a telescopic cinematograph." But the invention was never shipped to the United States, so Maskelyne created a new one with materials found in town, as explained by a U.K. paper in October of that year. "His specially constructed camera for the purpose was not transshipped; but, nothing daunted, he set to work procuring some lenses, constructed another camera, which was fixed up by the help of a local carpenter."
Our Solar Eclipse filmmaker, Nevil Maskelyne F.R.A.S., was born in 1863 and died in 1924. He married Ada Mary Ardley and lived as an astronomer, inventor, filmmaker, and stage magician. His son Jasper (1902-1973) was also a renowned stage magician, and the 1937 Pathé studios London film was made featuring him called The Famous Illusionist. Nevil Maskelyne also wrote several books on magic, including "Our Magic: The Art in Magic," the "Theory of Magic, the Practice of Magic," and "On the Performance of Magic." His father, John Nevil Maskelyne (1939-1917) is known as one of the most famous stage magicians of the time. He made his debut as a magician at age sixteen with friend George Cooke, doing an expose of a Davenport Brothers Spiritualistic performance. In 1869, Maskelyne and Cooke opened the Crystal Palace in London, and in 1873 they moved to Egyptian Hall, which was built for them in Picadilly, and founded the performance company titled 'Maskelyne and Cooke.' They performed acts at the Egyptian Hall twice daily, at 3 pm and 8 pm, for over thirty years. The company invented many illusions that are still performed today, such as the 'Mystic Cabinet,' a magical apparatus, and levitation. At the end of his career, he became an ardent skeptic of spiritualism and founded the 'Occult Committee,' a group whose purpose was to investigate the supernatural.
John Nevil Maskelyne (1939-1917) is a distant descendant of an earlier Nevil Maskelyne (1732–1811), the Royal Astronomer of Britain. Nevil Maskelyne (1732-1811), after the solar eclipse of 1748, became deeply interested in science. In the 1750s, Maskelyne (1732-1811) began studying under James Bradley, who was the Astronomer Royal. He then became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1758, and in 1765, was appointed Astronomer Royal himself. His accomplishments include the production of an almanac of the moon's movements called the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris for 1767. He was the lead scientist of the 1774 Schiehallion Experiment, which attempted to calculate the Earth's density, which estimated the Earth's density to be 4.5 x 1024 kilograms. We understand today the Earth's mass is 5.972 × 10^24 kg, giving the team in the late 1700s a high margin of success rate.
John Nevil Maskelyne (1939-1917), proprietor of Egyptian Hall, garnering acclaims from the attractions he presented daily, was an early adopter of cinema in his performances and provided brand new talent, short plays, and stage tricks. When his son returned from his trip to film the Solar Eclipse, the photographs and film he made were used to entice interested viewers to the performance hall. Along with the Eclipse's scientific film were a variety of other films about war and current events. An ad in The Era London and The Morning Post describes these attractions. "Among the attractions of the entertainment are a number of animated photographs of the palpitating events of the war, and a very interesting quarter of an hour maybe spent with Mr. Maskeylyne, as he expatiates on some photographs of the solar eclipse taken by his son, F.R.A.S. in North Carolina, with a specially constructed camera," and "The finest and most extensive series of Animated Photographs ever exhibited, including all the latest subjects from the seat of war. Also, an animated photograph of the recent solar Eclipse, of much scientific interest, being the first occasion that animated photography has been successfully employed in astronomical research, taken in North Carolina by Mr. Maskelyne, F.R.A.S."
The solar eclipse’s occult significance is spread across various cultures. Sometimes looked as an auspicious day, many cultures recommend passive and or introspective activities such as meditation or resting at home.
Upon the film's rediscovery and rehabilitation in 2019, Maskelyne's Solar Eclipse was presented in yet another context, the British Film Institute's Victorian film collection. In a press release titled, BFI National Archive and Royal Astronomical Society reanimate the first film to capture a solar eclipse as part of Victorian Film bi-centenary project, the film was found in The Royal Astronomical Society's archive and quote "has been painstakingly scanned and restored in 4K by conservation experts at the BFI National Archive, who have reassembled and retimed the film frame by frame.” According to the project’s website, the freshly digitized Solar Eclipse will be among “500 British films produced between 1895 and 1901 which are now publicly available for the first time, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria.”
Primary sources
1. “Solar Eclipse (1900) - the first moving image of an astronomical phenomenon | BFI Youtube Channel, May 30th 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4jfPfMKBgU
2. “The Coming Solar Eclipse” The Leeds Mercury, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England (May 5, 1900)
3. “The Coming Eclipse; Parties of Observation” The Standard, London, England (May 17, 1900)
4. Newcomb, Simon ,“The Coming Eclipse”, Marion, [OH] Daily Star (May 25, 1900)
5. “Total Eclipse of the Sun Turns Day to Night” The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania (May 28, 1900)
6. “Egyptian Hall; Performances Daily” The Morning Post, London, England (August 11, 1900)
7. “Maskelyne and Cooke’s” The Era, London, England (October 27, 1900)
8. “BFI National Archive and Royal Astronomical Society reanimate the first film to capture a solar eclipse as part of Victorian Film bi-centenary project” Press Release, BFIplayer.com (May 30 2019)
Secondary sources:
1. Abel, Richard Encyclopedia of Early Cinema Routledge, 2003.
2. Anderson, Robert “Defining the Supernatural in Iceland” Anthropological Forum, 2003
3. British Film Institute. African & Caribbean Unit, Edited by Herbert, Stephen and McKernan Stephen, Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema: A World-Wide Survey, British Film Institute Publisher 1996
4. British Pathe Historical Collection, Jasper Maskelyne 1937 film britishpathe.com/ video/jasper-maskelyne/query/magical
5. Barnouw, Erik The Magician and the Cinema, New York, Oxford Univerity Press 1981.
6. Dixon, Bryony, The Darkest Hour, Sight & Sound, August 2019
7. Foresta, Merry, Smillie and the 1900 Eclipse, Smithsonian Institute Archives (June 9th 2009) siarchives.si.edu/blog/smillie-and-1900-eclipse
8. Huckvale, David Movie Magick; The Occult in Film Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2018.
9. Leeder, Murray The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Macmillan, 2017.
10. NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Wadesboro Prime for Viewing of 1900 Solar Eclipse (May 28th 2014) ncdcr.gov/blog/2014/05/28/wadesboro-prime-for-viewing- of-1900-solar-eclipse
11. Pellissier, Marie, Summer Stargazing: Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal, Omohundro Institute Apprentice, William & Mary (August 8th, 2019) georgianpapers.com/ 2019/08/17/nevil-maskelyne-astronomer-royal/
12. Pusterla, Marco, Magic in Early Cinema, The Ephemeral Collector (November 20, 2017) smallmagicollector.wordpress.com/2017/11/20/magic-in-early-cinema-david-devant-tom- thumb-filoscope/
13. Sered, Susan “Afterword; Lexicons of the Supernatural.” Anthropological Forum, 13.2 213-18, (2003)
14. Solomon, Matthew Disappearing Tricks; Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century, Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield, University of Illinois Press 2010.