You’re correct that the last total eclipse visible over the continental United States was on February 26, 1979. However, the state of Hawaii was in the path of totality for the eclipse of July 11, 1991.
Looks like there’s a slightly earlier edition of the book from 1874 (with the same prediction).
That’s not right, is it? Because there was one in 1918: NASA - Total Solar Eclipse of 1918 Jun 08
In fact, the three sequential TSEs crossing CONUS, both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, are:
1918-06-08: NASA - Total Solar Eclipse of 1918 Jun 08
2017-08-21: https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/interactive_map/index.html, and
2045-08-12: NASA - Total Solar Eclipse of 2045 Aug 12
It appears my link is bonked. Let’s try again.
The paragraph does start like this, though: “As for eclipses beyond this date and visible in the easter part of the United States, they are few and unimportant for the next century. The Sun may rise entirely eclipsed at Boston, 2d October 1959, but totality will be very short. On 7th March 1970, there will be another brief totality, this time in Florida.” And, then, the part I quoted. The 1918 eclipse is mentioned two paragraphs before that one.
Sorry, and the “beyond this date” refers to 1937.
The book “Totality: The Great American Eclipses of 2017 and 2024”, is a detailed discussion of the history of such predictions.
Not that I can read it.
Well, the eclipse date and time is predicted in this little book I carry around with me, so that when I journey into the wild, uncharted interior of Ohio I can amaze and confound the natives by telling them the sun will go dark.*
*it worked great in King Solomon’s Mines.
I found an AP article from February 1970 about the 1970 eclipse, and it said:
Someone dropped the ball.
The back of the Sunday comics section has the kids page. I really like their line:
“On Monday a total solar eclipse is expected to cross the United States” (emphasis added).
It’s not just expected, it’s going to actually happen. It’s like saying “tomorrow morning the sun is expected to rise in the east”. Seems like such a weasly way of reporting actual scientific facts, something calculated over a century ago.
There is still a logical possibility that the eclipse will not occur as expected. The chance of it physically not happening is so vanishingly small so as to be impossible to even conceive of how to calculate it, but it’s at least logically possible that any number of things could happen that would cause the eclipse not to occur as expected.
The same is true, of course, about the Sun rising in the east. But no one makes news reports about the Sun rising in the East, people only refer to it as something that always happens with extreme regularity and can be counted on. The newspeople should always report “is expected” for any event in the future, but one could certainly relate to them not allowing the possibility when it’s something that’s perfectly cyclical. An eclipse is an actual news item, and needs to be treated like any prospective news announcement.
Fascinating, thanks.
600 million years from now – give or take – you will no longer be able to see a total solar eclipse anywhere on the surface of Earth, as the Moon will be too far away.
Anything from that time is likely to have used Hansen’s old lunar tables; inaccuracies there could account for any slight discrepancies compared to later calculations.
And a slightly earlier prediction, from 1871. It’s a bit of a cheat, though, since it’s only predicting eclipses seen from France, and so only predicts a weak partial. I don’t see any note that it would be total in North America. Still, it does get the date right and the degree of partiality (from France) looks about right.