How North Texans reacted to the solar eclipse in 1979

DALLAS - With the April 8 eclipse around the corner, KDFW went back into the archives to find how North Texans experienced past eclipses.

North Texas will see a total solar eclipse on April 8, but on Feb. 26, 1979, the path of totality was in the Pacific Northwest. Still, the DFW area got a chance to see a partial eclipse.

Channel 4's Charles Johnson spoke to crowds at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

Onlookers made some alterations to telescopes and used special viewers to take a peek at the eclipse without damaging their eyes.

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Physics professor George Crawford used a reflecting mirror on a movie screen to give people a chance to see the shadow as the Moon passed between the Earth and Sun.

Some of the crowd was a bit disappointed by what they saw.

"I really thought it would be a lot more, you know, big deal, but it's pretty neat looking. You really just see shadows. It's not like a picture," said one member.

Dr. Crawford encouraged the crowd to appreciate the beauty of the event.

"It's the fact that we can predict when eclipses will occur," he said. "It demonstrates to us that we really have the equations of motion. We have the knowledge of the forces involved so we can predict the relative motion of these three bodies and come up very precisely as to when the alignment occurs."

Johnson wrapped up his coverage by calling it a "day to remember" and saying that the next eclipse would happen in 38 years.

That, of course, was the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse.