‘The biggest show on earth’

That’s how The Buffalo Evening News described the last time Buffalo experienced a total eclipse of the sun.

The minute-and-a-half spectacle occurred at 9:07 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 24, 1925.

“It was a darkness deeper than that of any storm. It was a swift darkness. It was a darkness that showed that the source of light had suddenly been blocked out, that the old sun which holds the spinning world in its course and orders the lives of all had suddenly failed,” according to The News.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a Buffalo day in January, it was cloudy. Meteorologist David Cuthbertson said two days before the event that conditions were somewhat favorable for the eclipse, but he gave no further assurances, saying it was still too soon to predict with scientific accuracy.

Western New York is preparing for another eclipse April 8, something Buffalo will not see again for 120 years.

The center line of the eclipse passed through Buffalo in 1925, as it will again April 8, said Tim Collins, co-host of “The 7th Magnitude” podcast and a research associate in astronomy at the Buffalo Museum of Science. The duration of the total eclipse is longest along the center line.

“In 1925, the Elmwood Village was right on the center line,” Collins said. “They would have had the maximum exposure.”

The next total eclipse in Buffalo will fall on Oct. 26, 2144.

Collins said there is a movement afoot to create a time capsule for that group of stargazers. He envisions the capsule could contain viewing glasses, posters, T-shirts and other memorabilia, being opened the year before the eclipse.

In the days leading up to the 1925 eclipse, much like today, readers were warned that “blindness may follow gazing at eclipse with naked eyes.”

They were told to view the eclipse through deep smoked glass or a developed photograph film that was completely exposed to light, methods that are not recommended today. Others suggested punching a card with a pin or needle and holding it above a piece of white paper. With the sun to your back, shining through the pinprick hole, the image is projected on the paper and is a way of monitoring the progress of the eclipse without looking at the sun.

Those who looked to the west at the start of totality said they saw the “engulfing shadow of the moon sweep with incredible swiftness across the lake and onto the city.”

People came to the doorways and windows and even took to building rooftops. Others braved outdoor temperatures that hovered near zero degrees, including some who huddled on street corners.

“They nudged each other,” according to The News. “They searched the sky for a rift in the clouds. They talked excitedly of the unusual experience.”

The Associated Press reported that deer at the Bronx Zoo tumbled over one another in terror in the darkness. A great Arctic owl hooted and flew about and the alligator bellowed as if it was night.

“The chattering monkeys were awed and quiet for the first time in the history of the zoo. Songbirds from all parts of the world dipped their heads under their wings and slept,” the AP reported.

Buffalonians turned on indoor lights during the darkness. Mayor Frank X. Schwab had already agreed to keep street lights off during the eclipse, but they stayed on because of the cloudiness.

Professor Peter F. Piper, head of the science department at Hutchinson High School, was on top of the Elmwood Avenue school, while professor Harlow Shapley, a well-known astronomer and head of the Harvard College Observatory, was at the top of the telephone company building on Franklin Street. A professor Curtain, of D’Youville College, watched from the third floor of the college at Porter and Prospect.

Meanwhile, WGR kept “banging away its signals” to see if they were affected by the phenomenon, and University of Buffalo physics professor L. Grant Hector tested terrestrial magnetism at the Main Street campus.

Cuthbertson, the Weather Bureau meteorologist, hovered over instruments measuring wind velocity, barometric pressure, temperature and cloud intensity.

Dirigibles and airplanes were at the ready around the country to view the event, and there were cameras and telescopes at 13 fixed observatories.

Nine planes that had planned to take observers to the air from Mitchel Field on Long Island were grounded by frozen engines. They included a U.S. Marine Corps plane carrying a radio to handle a running story of the eclipse for The Buffalo Evening News and North American Newspaper Alliance.

“The action of the clouds was peculiarly vexing,” The News reported. The day started out promising, but then clouds rolled over the city. “Soon the whole sky was overcast and it became certain that Buffalo would lose the chance of the lifetime of this generation to see the corona of the sun.”

While it could not be seen in Buffalo, Dunkirk and Gowanda both had clear views. North Collins reported light, intermittent clouds. Kenmore had an intermittent view after totality, and Niagara Falls was reported to be generally cloudy with a fleeting glimpse just before totality.

Conditions were ideal at Cornell University in Ithaca, and downstate in Westchester County.

Piper, the Hutchinson High science teacher, said a murky band could be seen extending across the lake from Point Abino, Ont., as the eclipse neared totality. It looked like an arched cone, swooping down on the city at the instant of greatest darkness.

Much anticipation preceded the 1925 eclipse. Some suggested that motorists stop their cars, offices and factories stop work and lights be turned off during the event.

“We should stop everything to watch the eclipse,” Piper told The News. “It will be the only time in our lives that we shall have a chance to see a total eclipse unless we travel to great distances. It is the biggest show on earth.”