More than 115 years ago, scientists from all over the world gathered in Wadesboro eager for the chance to view a rare total solar eclipse.
Photographers put images from the event on glass slides, and on March 10, two of these slides were presented to a local museum.
The glass photographic slides were found in a safe deposit box owned by the Anson County Historical Society. Current society President Tommy Allen said the items had been placed there by the late John Dunlap, a Wadesboro historian and former president of the Anson County Historical Society.
Allen had an incomplete list of the box’s contents — that did include the slides — and opened the box to complete the inventory.
The slides have found a new home at the Rotary Planetarium and Science Center. Allen presented the slides to planetarium director Wendy Efird during the Wadesboro Rotary Club’s March 10 meeting.
“Rather than letting what I think are these significant pieces of history lounge around in a dark safe forever, as they have for the last 20 almost years, we thought maybe we could loan them — give them, but loan them, technically — to the planetarium down here,” Allen said. “They have a display about the eclipse. So the board of the historical society unanimously approved that.”
The four-inch slides show two images from the expedition. One pictures the flash spectrum from the eclipse. The other shows the observation sites of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Yerkes Observatory off Morgan Street.
The scientists at those sites were just a few of those who showed up for the eclipse on May 28, 1900.
A chance to view a total solar eclipse was rare. According to the Smithsonian Institute Archives, which has a Web page devoted to the 1900 eclipse, the trip to Wadesboro followed two disappointing previous opportunities in locations across the globe.
In 1896, cloudy weather denied them the chance to see the eclipse, while in 1898, plague complicated astronomical expeditions to view a total eclipse in India, according to the website.
The Smithsonian scientists wanted to use the opportunity in Wadesboro, which was deemed to be the best location for viewing the eclipse in North America, to capture photographic evidence of the solar corona.
The historical society’s images were taken by an observer with the Yerkes Observatory and donated to the historical society in 1997.
One Chicago doctor named George Snow Isham showed up for the eclipse and is pictured with scientists from Yerkes in photos of the event that Efird and Allen displayed at the Rotary meeting.
Isham funded the majority of the Yerkes expedition at the same time he was building a 70-room mansion in Chicago that later ended up being bought by Hugh Hefner in 1959, becoming the east Playboy Mansion, Allen said.
The next total solar eclipse will be visible in parts of the United States on Aug. 21, 2017. Although it will only be a partial eclipse in Anson County, it will be visible in its totality in Columbia, South Carolina.
Efird said she hopes to help educate the public about solar eclipses and viewing safety, including information on special eclipse viewing glasses, before the 2017 eclipse.
Reach reporter Imari Scarbrough at 704-994-5471 and follow her on Twitter @ImariScarbrough.
