Welder glass in London and India

Friends gathered

on the balcony of an apartment two levels above ours, on August 12, and looking safely at the Sun through my pieces of welder’s glass. They are seeing the Moon begin to make itself known as a bite out of the lower right part of the Sun’s outline.

Between the people are glimpses of the Thames and the Westminster skyline.

If we had been farther south than London, the Moon would have appeared higher relative to the far more distant Sun, and would have covered more of it – or all of it, as for people who were in the path of total eclipse in Spain.

This on August 12 was the 16th in my tally of solar eclipses witnessed, though 3 were annular (ring-shaped, not total), and 2 were clouded out. Nothing to the 75 of the late Jay Pasachoff.

For those planning to see the 2027 Aug 2 eclipse, path of totality across Gibraltar, Tunisia, Cyrenaica, Egypt, Aden, as shown in this map from the upcoming new Astronomical Companion

I’n going to add this to my box about eye safety:

“Traditional #14 welder’s glass cannot become more transparent over time. The metal elements that increase density and filter light (and cause the green tint) are chemically built into the molecular structure of the glass itself during manufacture, and therefore are permanent.”

I carried one piece of welder’s glass with me from eclipse to eclipse, including 1983 June 11, when I had the whole of Borobudur to myself, an ancient Buddhist temple in the form of a sculptured mountain; the Indonesian government had ordered everyone to stay indoors. I changed to carrying two pieces after 1995 October 24 in India. This is the story, condensed.

The abandoned city and its Tall Gate

I bicycled from Delhi to several cities and arrived at Fatehpur Sikri, the deserted city. It was built by the Mogul emperor Akbar, abandoned for lack of water. The wall surrounds a great area and many remarkable buildings.

A stone mountain of stairs rose up to a soaring portal, the Buland Darvâzâ (Persian, Tall Gate) of the great mosque. The stone mountain swarmed with people, perhaps a hundred along each of the fifty steps in the front and each of the fifty steps on the east.

Gopal Kulkarni (with whom I afterwards corresponded), a bank clerkl partly paralyzed, had come from Bombay with his young son. With his permission, I lifted him to a better position, he weighed a feather.

From time to time I held my square of welder’s glass to the sun, and at last from me and from other points spread the news that the partial eclipse had begun, and the crowd’s excitement took a step upward. How different from Java! Some may have obeyed the government’s admonition to stay indoors and watch television, but Indians, an intellectual people – a cerebral people! – were interested, they wanted to know.

I was badly sorry for them: the light was dimming, the chatter was rising, something tremendous was transpiring, it was all caused by some mystery amid that burst of glare, seemingly as strong as ever, up in the sky, but that was just where they could not look! Hundreds of foil spectacles circulated – those who had them to sell drove a hot trade – but they were far too few. I was worried to see people with bits of smoked glass and exposed film; one proudly brandished a sheet of x-ray film, you could see pale ribs through which the light could pierce even more easily; I shook my head and urged them to look only briefly, tried to stop them further crumpling their fragments of aluminum foil (the slightest break could let the sun through); how many in this happy crowd were going to lose chunks of their eyesight?

I held court with my welder’s glass: for almost the whole hour and a half of the increasing partial eclipse I held it out with my left hand and eager people queued, almost tumbling over each other, to look through it. If I were to relive the scene I would bring at least two pieces. I would hold them out with two hands, or set them up on poles, and make the people form two lines, male and female: the girls as usual got left out, hanging shyly back while the boys gobbled the views of the sun. At a progressing spectacle, one look is not enough; regulars among the crowd came round again and again. Each newcomer grabbed at the glass, but I held onto it, afraid that someone would drop it…

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