geniuses of the firmament to gather in the old city on a particular day,
hour, and even minute. There had not been a total solar eclipse in London
since 1104, and those intervening six hundred years had barely witnessed
any technological advancements. Most Englishmen believed in witches,
werewolves, unicorns, and magic; although heliocentrism and the new
mathematics had acceptance among the learned, there were no practical
applications for the common man.
A total solar eclipse was a biblical event. For those lucky enough to
witness a total eclipse on a cloudless day, the phenomenon of utter
darkness for a few minutes is fantastical and, well, magical. We are, at
once, Mayans staring at the sky, dutifully shoulder to shoulder with our
fellow man, swept up in the vortex of planets, stars, and moons.
Halley calculated the path of totality and published a map of his
predictions. By making known the imminence of the event, Halley hoped
to limit terror and to maximize calculations from the learned on the
British Isles and throughout continental Europe.
With quill in hand, Halley had spent weeks reviewing the data tables
generated by “natural philosophers” in the preceding decades. Prior to
1662, there was essentially no sharing of scientific information among the
scholarly, but the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society changed
everything. Halley was able to gather data from years of astronomical
records, and with industrious determination, was convinced there was an
impending eclipse. An invitation was proffered just in time, and the well-
to-do intelligentsia arrived at Crane Court, wearing wigs and waistcoats at
the break of dawn.
Crane Court is a narrow alleyway off Fleet Street in the heart of the
City of London (the City is the formerly walled enclave in the heart of
modern-day greater London); the Court was on the outermost boundary of
the Great Fire of 1666 that consumed almost the entire core of London. At
the end of Crane Court was the building that served as the Royal Society’s
meeting house, and it was here that scientific history was forged with
sunlight and shadows.
In the hours before an eclipse, you cannot see the moon nearing the sun
—it is simply invisible to the naked eye as it is outstripped by our star.
What is appreciable, particularly on a sunny day, is the diminution of
radiant heat. An odd, windless, cloudless cooling occurs.
marcin
(Marcin)
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