Total Solar Eclipse of 29 July 1878

Étienne Léopold Trouvelot was a French silk merchant who fled to America in 1855, took a job at the Harvard College Observatory, and became one of the most gifted astronomical draftsmen of the 19th century. He observed the total solar eclipse of 29 July 1878 from Creston, Wyoming, and drew it in pastel from memory. Charles Scribner's Sons chromolithographed his drawings in 1881 as The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, still one of the most beautiful astronomical publications ever made. Trouvelot's other legacy: he accidentally introduced the gypsy moth to North America by letting eggs escape from a silk-farming experiment. Now at New York Public Library, New York.