Did you see it? Viewers on April 8, 2024, snapped countless millions of photographs of the solar eclipse.

For the total solar eclipse of April 16, 1893—visible in South America and Africa—only a handful of photographs were taken. At least one made it into a display at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

A photograph of the April 1893 solar eclipse, exhibited in the California State Building at the 1893 World’s Fair. [Image from Bancroft, Hubert Howe The Book of the Fair. The Bancroft Company, 1893.]

World’s Fair historian Hubert Bancroft provides this description of an eclipse photograph exhibited by the Lick Observatory inside the California State Building:

“Still another special exhibit is the collection of astronomical photographs illustrating the work of the Lick observatory in the space allotted to Santa Clara county, where, near the summit of Mount Hamilton, more than 4,000 feet above the sea-level, is the site of this well known institution. Of these, three specimens are here reproduced, the one representing the total solar eclipse of 1893 being a copy of a photograph taken in Chile by the members of an expedition specially despatched for the purpose.” [Bancroft 826] This seems to be a photograph taken by astronomer John Martin Schaeberle, an astronomer from the Lick Observatory who led the expedition to Chile to document the April 1893 solar eclipse.

In the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, the Exhibit of American Photographs also contained photographs of an eclipse.

The sun shone brightly in Jackson Park on Sunday, April 16. Some 16,000 visitors enjoyed the warm breeze as they watched final preparations in every corner of the fairgrounds as workers prepared for Opening Day in just two weeks hence.

SOURCE

Bancroft, Hubert Howe The Book of the Fair. The Bancroft Company, 1893.