Scientists Look on from Skyscraper

H. L. Doherty Is Host to Eclipse Group 1,000 Feet Up on Sixty Wall Building.

TESLA VIEWS PHENOMENON

Inventor Reveals He Is Seeking New Source of Energy Having to Do With the Sun.

TEMPERATURE DROP NOTED

Dr. Sheldon Finds It Slight — N. Y. U. Photographs Detail Through Infra-Red Filter.

A group of New York scientists who were unable to journey into the path of totality of the eclipse left their instruments and tables of celestial mechanics behind them yesterday and, from a perfect coign of vantage 1,000 feet above the dust and haze and heat of the city's streets, enjoyed the phenomenon as a spectacle instead of a problem.

They were guests of Henry L. Doherty in the observation tower atop the Sixty Wall Street Building, the tallest in downtown Manhattan, and for once they could be ordinary, even though unusually understanding, observers.

The group included Dr. H. H. Sheldon, Professor of Physics at New York University; Dr. Robert Cushman Murphy, curator of ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History; Calvin W. Rice, secretary of the New York Museum of Science and Industry, and K. Kallman, curator of the motion picture division of the museum.

Mingling with them was a group of industrialists, including M. H. Aylesworth, Percy H. Johnston, A. B. Leach, Floyd Parsons, Parsons, James C. Stewart, B. C. Forbes, H. Mercer Walker, Richard Alrey, Alanson Lathrop and George MacDonald. They were welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Doherty, Mr. Jones and Miss Jessica Dragonette.

Presently they were joined by Nikola Tesla, electrical inventor; Howard Chandler Christy, Joseph P. Day and other guests.

Field glasses and small telescopes were provided.

As the disk of the moon began its march across the sun's face at 3:23 P. M. Mr. Kallman began taking motion pictures of the spectacle and continued taking them at ten-minute intervals throughout the afternoon.

View From Skyscrapers Superb.

The view from the tower, as from the other skyscrapers, was superb, for at that height the observers were above the ground haze, and the sun, escaping from the threatening clouds, was unobscured against a hot, lead-colored sky.

The view of the city engaged the watchers almost as much as that of the sun. As the eclipse increased in extent groups of people appeared on every roof, on every balcony and at every window. As totality neared, pedestrians on the crowded streets below stopped to gaze upward, and automobiles paused.

When, after 4 o'clock, the eclipse approached its maximum, the watchers, scientists and non-scientists alike, crowded out upon the balconies to study the phenomenon.

"The sun's certainly on a bear market," remarked one of the Wall Street men.

As the sun narrowed to a slender, shimmering crescent crescent an unearthly dusk fell across the city. The waters of the harbor were rippling silver over which tugboats and ferryboats scuttled. It seemed to grow cooler.

Every one, on every rooftop, was now gazing aloft. Some of the keener-eyed thought they saw irregularities at the extreme tips of the crescent, like the suggestion of Bailey's Beads, formed by the light of the sun shining through the valleys of the moon.

Many watched for the shadow-bands which attend a total eclipse just before totality, but the scientists doubted whether they could be seen at an eclipse even so nearly total as it was over New York yesterday.

Tesla Seeks New Energy Source.

At the height of the eclipse only the lower portion of the sun was visible. Then the tip of the crescent on the right of the sun's face began imperceptibly to creep upward, the crescent began slowly to grow thicker and the eclipse was on the wane. Only after the best of the spectacle was over did the clouds close in and, toward sunset, blot out the sun.

Dr. Sheldon said yesterday that the effect of coolness occasioned by a total eclipse, and to a lesser extent by one so nearly total as yesterday's was here, is more psychological than real. Dr. Sheldon took careful temperature observations at the time of the total eclipse visible here in 1925, using a thermocouple.

"The drop in temperature was very slight," he said, "only about what is produced when a cloud passes in front of the sun."

Dr. Tesla, who has been at work for some time on a new source of energy, revealed yesterday that this source had to do with the sun and that he expected to get valuable information for use in his own work from the observations of the astronomers.

While the scientists atop Sixty Wall Street were enjoying themselves, Dr. W. F. Ferguson, Assistant Professor of Physics at New York University, was busy at the Washington Square College of the university photographing the sun through an infrared filter. These photographs were expected to provide interesting details of the sun's surface.

Edwin T. Schwartz of the Museum of Science and Industry also took photographs from Mount Wilson.