I neglected to get a pair of special solar eclipse glasses for Monday’s big event so Sunday evening was spent franticly scrounging in my basement for a sturdy cardboard box to use as an alternative protective device.
It had served me well in 1963.
Life Magazine 1963 Instructions for protecting yourself for the Total Solar Eclipse July 20 with a sunscope.
While some kids borrowed their parent’s Foster Grant sunglasses to stare at the eclipse, for my first ever total solar eclipse on July 20th, 1963 I donned a “Sardines From Norway” box over my head to look at the sun. It may not have been approved by NASA but it was given the A-OK by my second-grade teacher and by Life Magazine who demonstrated to readers how to safely look at the eclipse by creating a Sunscope, a pinhole camera-like contraptions that indirectly project an image of the sun.
My mid-century childhood eyes always seemed in danger.
Fear of blindness seemed to loom over me. Sitting too close to the TV in a dark room would ruin your eyes permanently leading you down a dangerous path that ended with you selling pencils on the street. Of course, you could also shoot your eye out with a Red Ryder BB gun, or stab your eye by running with scissors causing blindness.
But the most dangerous of all was staring at a solar eclipse.
Somehow a cardboard box would save me from that fate.
Life Magazine 1963 Instructions for protecting yourself for the Total Solar Eclipse July 20 , with a sunscope.
In the final week of school that June, my last science project in second grade was to make a Sunscope in anticipation of the summer’s major event the Total Solar Eclipse.
My teacher Miss Custer had taken her cue from Life which ran an article offering tips on how to construct one using the example of a fifth-grade class in Illinois.
Life Magazine 1963 Instructions for protecting yourself for the Total Solar Eclipse July 20. The teacher explains the science behind the Sunscope.
During the solar eclipse of 1960, hundreds of people suffered permanent eye damage from looking at the sun.
Something had to be done.
Now in the space age of 1963, there was a solution. With the help from the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Blindness, fifth-grade students at an elementary school in Maywood Illinois avoided the same fate by building sunscopes. The magazine offered step-by-step instructions for those wanting to make the project at home.
Life Magazine 1963 Instructions for protecting yourself for the Total Solar Eclipse July 20 , with a sunscope
A final word to the wise from Life “Don’t forget to come out for fresh air.”
The Eclipse-O-Scope
The Eclipse-O-Scope to view the Sun safely August 31,1932
Always worried about my eyes, my mother wasn’t convinced of the effectiveness of a cardboard box for viewing the eclipse and went rummaging through one of her many junk draws until she came across what she was looking for.
Buried among old receipts, a 1939 World Fair Pickle pin, and an old ball of red and white bakery string, she found what she was looking for.
Her very own “Eclipse-O-Scope” that she used as a 6 six year to view the Total Solar Eclipse of August 31, 1932. Her family had driven to Vermont that summer for the occasion, armed with the hi-tech glasses made by Kodak. These cardboard stock frames with “lenses” of darkened celluloid were made for safe viewing.
The Eclipse Was No Laughing Matter
As the momentum for the eclipse came closer, I preferred to take my reliable eclipse advice from the newspaper.
The comics actually. Peanuts specifically.
Charlie Brown and the gang offered their own sound advice for eclipse watching explaining it over 5 days from July 15- 20th.
Linus demonstrated a safe way of absorbing the eclipse as opposed to looking directly at the eclipse. On the day the Eclipse passed over his area, Linus was left helplessly standing in the rain with cloud cover entirely too thick to witness the eclipse.
July 15, 1963
July 16, 1963
July 17, 1963
July 18, 1963
July 19, 1963
July 20, 1963