We appreciate it. Even though sometimes you dont say thank you. Thank you. I will carry on until i drop dead. Hi my name receive linn and im so glad to welcome you to the store this evening and were excited to welcome david barron, hes the author of american eclipse which is why youre is thing here. And were very, very excited because this is a really interesting book where the wild west meets the stars essentially, and if i was reading a little bit about it and about the time and the e and i thought how interesting 100 years ago 99 years ago was the last time we had a total eclipse that went from coast to coast. And it it was right over colorado. But you think about colorado 100 years ago it was a different place. It was known for it was a wild west. You know. Who would come to colorado well they wanted to come because you could stand on mountain and see eclipse better than anywhere else. So all of a sudden california took on a new place in science and a place that was the beginning of tourism in colorado and there was a lot of incredible tourism. So it all started with the loss of light. And you know, eclipse is first begun to record them it was the end of the world and then reading in 11 33 king henry the first died right after this total eclipse and they thought it was the end of their era. And now we have another one. So exciting if you get your own o american eclipse glasses so you can safely view the eclipse that is going to happen not right over colorado this time. But over o the west. On august 21st best place to see that will be in jackson arizona. Wyoming where david will be with the glasses on probably. And were so excited that hes here. Awardwinning journalist author and broadcaster so please welcome david barron. Thank you for coming out on this rainy night i have been on a book tour now for over a month. And im just thrilled to be here at cover a real highlight, i mean, i live in colorado. I live in boulder and as you all know this is a real jam in colorado. Theres eclipse coming up many our near future august 21st. For the first time in in 99 years total Solar Eclipse will cross the country coast to coast this is a big deal so how many of you have plans to go see the total eclipse . All right. Hopefully by the end of this evening you will all have plans. And of those who have been planning how long how many of you have beenen playing to see it for lets say at least a month . For at least a year . At least a decade how many year have you been forward to in . About six. Six years not six decades well not that this is a competition but ive been planning for this eclipse for 19 years. Indeed i have been planning this book for 19 years. So its surreal to see it as an call book so i want to start out and read a little bit from it and tell you about it but i want to talk about how i came to to write the become an as i say, i first got the 19 years ago but the story actually goes back a little further than that. So we have to go back to 1994. Back in the 90s i was a science correspondent for npr and in may of 1994, a Solar Eclipse a partial Solar Eclipse was set to cross the country and so i did a story about this. For morning edition, and i interviewed astronomer named ji and he explained what was going to happen, and how to view it. But he emphasized that as interesting as a partial Solar Eclipse is, a total Solar Eclipse is completely different. You know, total eclipse for all of two or three minutes usually moon complool obscures the face of the sun. Creating what he described as the most a u inspiring spectacle of all of nature so then jay, this was astronomer from williams college, gave me a piece of as that i will always remember. He turned to me and he said, before you die, you owe is to yourself to experience a Solar Eclipse to shocking to hear someone say i didnt know really well and felt intimate but he got my attention so i did some research, and first thing, of course, to know about a total eclipse is if you wait for one to come to you, youre going to be waiting a long time. Any given point on earth experiences a total eclipse about about once every 400 years. But if youre willing to travel you dont have to wait that long. And i found out that a few years later in 198, a total eclipse was going to cross the caribbean and now, a total eclipse is visible only in a narrow path about 100 miles wide that is called path of to it willty thats where moon falls and in february 1998 the path of totality was going to cross aruba. So i thought well, aruba, february, sounded like a good trip anyway so i headed south to to enjoy the sun and to see what would happen when the sun went away. Well the day of the eclipse i was out behind the high regency on the beach we were all waiting for show to begin and we were wearing eclipse glasses like the ones evelyn showed you. With cardboard frame and really dark lenses that enabled us to look at the sun safely so total begins as partial as moon makes its way in front of the sun so first it looked like sun had notch in its edge and that notch grew larger and larger soon sun became a crescent, and it was all very interesting. But i qongt say it was spectacular. Day remained bright. If i had not known what was going on overhead, i wouldnt have noticed anything unusual. Well about ten minutes before the total eclipse was set to begin, weird things started to happen so here i am on tropical beach and cool wind picks up. And then daylight looks off. Colors look odd, and shadowed look very is strange. They had become bizarrely sharp like someone had turned the contrast knob on tv. And then offshore i noticed running lights on boats so clearly it was getting dark although i hadnt realized it. But soon it was obvious and then all of a sudden the lights wngt went out well that like cheer erupted from the beach. And i took off my eclipse glasses because now only now during the total phase it is safe to look at the sun with a maked eye. And i looked upward and i was in my mid30s and i had lived on earth long enough to know what this sky looks like. I mean, i had blue sky and gray skies and starry and angry skies and pink skies that sun, but here with a sky i had never seen. So first there were the colors up above it was a deep purple gray like twilight. But on the horizon it was orange like sunset. 360 degrees. And up above bright star and planets had come out so there was jupiter and there was mercury. And there was venus and the planets were all in a line and there along that line was this thing this glorious bewildering thing it looked like a reef woven from silvery thread that just hung out there in space. Now, with that was the suns outer atmosphere the solar krona. And if youve ever seen a picture, pictures dont do it justice. It is not simply a halo around the sun. Its finally textured like it is made out of strands of silk. And although it looked nothing like our sun, of, of course, i w that was the sun so there was the sun and there were the planets and i could see how planets revolve around the sun like i had left our solar system and a was looking back at creation. And for the first time in my life, i just felt this really connected to the universe in in all of its immense and i stood there in what i can only describe as a state of nirvana for all of 174 seconds less than three minutes. Well all of a sudden it was over. The sun burst out and blue sky returned. The stars and planets and the krona requester gone. World returned to gnarl but i had changed. So thats how i became an eclipse chaser. So this is now i spend my tim and hard earned money i head to where moon shadow will fall to experience another minutes of cosmic bliss. But back in 1988 as a Science Writer i thought im going to write a book about eclipse chasing. But i knew that time to come out with a book would be in the summer of 2017. Because this is when americans will actually care about eclipses. So i put the project on hold an back to raid radio wrote another book which is up here and about 6 years ago i started to get serious as if im really going to come out with that eclipse in the summer of 2017 i better figure out what its going to be and i i didnt want to just write, you know, everything you need to know about eclipses or how to chase eclipse of 2017 although those are are fine books. I like to tell stories and i wanted to find a really good eclipse story. Something worthy of a book something that was entertaining and enlightening and will provide narrative thread for me to talk about eclipses to make them so interesting and why im so excited about them. And why everyone should go see them this summer. So thats as i say six years ieg started to look around and it became clear very early on that the best eclipse stories are not from mod rn times not from today. But from the 19th century. Because back in the 19th century total Solar Eclipses werent just interesting natural spectacles. They were really important to science. This was a, in fact, been called golden age this was a time when scientists were starting to unravel the story of the sun what is this great ball of fire in the sky what is it made of and what fuels it and there were studying they could do only during a total e Solar Eclipse which meant that again, these occur only about once every 18 months somewhere on the planet usually something is really inconvenient to get to like antarctica or middle of the pacific. And they lost all of three minutes. But the nations of europe and the u. S. Would put together these expeditions head out to where with they plotted the path of totality set up their equipment about parade a cloud didnt come along, and then in three minutes frantically conduct their studies. So i started look at the various eclipses during that period so there was the eclipse 1868 that crossed over i understood i understood why and 1870 over mediterranean and each of the eclipses has a cast of characters and interesting science that was being done, and interesting setting. And then i came to the eclipse of 1878. So july 29, 1878 the path of totality went right down the american frontier across the wild west montana territory to texas. And at what i started looking into what was going on, and the first thing i found out which if you google it youll probably find out. Is that at the eclipse of 1878 the most notable person to came to the wild west was Thomas Edison. Thomas edison was in wyoming on july 29th, 1878, to see a Solar Eclipse this was a 31yearold Thomas Edison who had just risen to worldwide fame for his invention of the phonograph. And right after he got home from wyoming, he started work on a new project which was the lightbulb. So between the phone grandfather and lightbulb edison has a trip out quest to see a total eclipse but theres got to be something there and, of course, there was a lot there. But then i started to think well there with dozens of interesting people who came out to wyoming and colorado and texas. And i started to make a list of who were these people an what was important for them and who might build a book arranged, and that was only that edison was one of them and edison it was a fascinating time in his life because edison this long Thomas Edison did not just be himself as an invent tore he actually wanted to be a scientist as well and this is different from what youll read about in most of his biography because he later in life was quite adamant that he was not a scientist, in fact, he was disdainful about economic scientist they didnt get their hands dirty and didnt understand how world works he did. But this young Thomas Edison wanted the respect of academic scientists and he, in fact, wanted to do basic Scientific Research so he invented a device, which was going to be bigger than phonograph. [laughter] brought out to wyoming he was a very sensitive heat detector that he was going to use with aura around to see it gave off heat as well as light so edison was around important character he was coming out quest to show that his was going to be this important knew device, and that he was a real scientist. Well another scientist i came upon who i thought clearly needed to be one of my main characters is a gentleman named james and watson back in the era was well known astronomer at the university of michigan. Who was well known as a planet hunter. You see back in that era, there werent just major planets that we all know. But there were minor planets which are asteroids not that many asteroids that had been found and they were considered planets called minor planets but they were given names like the major ones and finding they will was a big dole and James Craig Watson had a knack for findingsed tried one of the biggest in the world and he kill out west also to wyoming at 1878 to look for a planet and it wasnt just any old planet it was a planet called vulcan now long before star trek was thought to be a real planet. Back in 1878, many astronomers thought that the planet vulcan orbited sun between mercury and sun, in fact, planet if you look on some solar system charts from that era it goes vulcan mercury venus, earth the reason they thought it existed is because mercury orbit didnt seem to make sense when they made the calculations based on mechanics mercury orbit seemed to be off a little bit, and so astronomers figured there seems to be something messing with orbit they called it vulcan because roman god of fire with a hot space next to the sun. No one had ever reliably seen it but that wasnt really a surprise so close to the fun it will never tbht sky at night. And you cant see it in the daytime because it is lost in the suns glare and only time you might see vulcan is when moon briefly cover up bright sun and you can look around the sun for a a point of light thats not on your star chart and thats during a Solar Eclipse so he was had looking for vulcan. By the third main krk character and a piece of the bock youll see image of the three main characters, against harper weekly showing eclipse over Rocky Mountain manies. But ill show you third main character i have to say is any my favorite her name is Maria Mitchell. So Maria Mitchell the most famous female scientist in america she was an astronomer and risen to fame in 1847 when she discovered a comet and received a gold pettle medal from the king of denmark by 1878 she was professor of astronomer at vaster college, of course, at the time was a realtively new all female college in pip poughkeepsie, new york and we talk about difficulties women have in science even today you can imagine it was a lot harder being a female scientist in 1878, and so let me just read a little bit from what life was like for maria hitch el and kind of treatment the unequal treatment that she received. Despite teaching at a Womens College she received less than it half of the carling paid to the schools male professors in justice she fought with some success. And while astronomer and other universities offered jean is rows faculty housing mitchell occupied and slept on a sofa in a corner box like space that served as lecture room and college provided her with a separate apartment for sleeping it had previously been observatory coal storeroom, one of the students marked occasion in tongue and cheek bursts. Beautiful venus pride of the morning, tell it to stars that have fled that in a sweet chamber that needs no adorning ms. Mitchell sleeps in a bed despite her clashes with college administration, mitchell loved her girls as she called her students and in turn they adored her. It was for them that she took up arms in fight for womens Higher Education a campaign she waged even as a storm of opposition billowed. In 1873, a year when nation of grappling with financial panic a prominent boston physician introduced a new cause for public alarm. In a book called sex this education or a fair chance for the girl, doctor edward h. Clark warned that push finish female colleges and coeducation could seriously junders mine the help of american women. He contended by taxing brain Higher Education caused a girls body especially her reproductive organs to atrophy. When rest of the development of the reproductive system is nearly or quite complete it producing change in a womans character he wrote and this included, quote, a dropping out of maternal instinct many courseness and force. Such persons he went on are to the sexless class of termites. Clark recountinged case studies of previously halfs girls after studying girls became pail, sterile and he diagnosed death from overwork and in a new term victims entered the late 19th century thrown on defense proponents of womens education published rebuttal. Offering evidence of the health of College Girls and stressing that benefits of higher learning. If we know the number of young girls who died from overstudy let us find number who have died from aimless lies than those who cease to be young says mitchell clarks critics called out his book for what it was a thin hysterical, base on conjecture and evidence no matter sex and education found receptive audience in america unsettled by shifting gender roles the civil war having tragically killed well over half a million men left many women unmarried force them to enter the work force. Moon time effort to abolish shave rei including right to vote no longer denied at least in theory to freed black hen. American society changing that it seemed women were in danger of no longer being women and men would soon be e mask lated and sees to be men clarks book were told this horrid future. So Maria Mitchell up against an American Society that not only didnt see women as scientists but didnt even think that women should be educated in colleges it a large extent did something truly remarkable in 1878. So at that time, when there were these groups of men assembling out west Thomas Edison with his game and qat watson expeditions out west, Maria Mitchell assembled an all female expedition. And, in fact, it came to denver. And in the art insert youll see a card of the College Party on the planes outside of denver so this was, of course, it was a scientific expedition but it was more than that. It was a kind of political theater it was a chance to show an