Observations of solar eclipses played an extraordi nary role in the development of solar physics. First of all, this is referred to the studies of the solar corona. Scientific studies of the corona started in the middle of the 19th century, firstly, owing to the appearance of photography and, secondly, the development of spec tral analysis methods and the practical application of this methods in observations of solar eclipses. The first photographs (daguerreotypes) of the solar corona were obtained by Bush and Berkovskii during the eclipse of July 28, 1851, in Königsberg. M. Waldmeier, a classic of eclipse observations, noted that precisely that instant should be considered as the beginning of the era of scien tific studies of the solar corona (Waldmeier, 1951). Soon, discoveries poured in as if from the “horn of plenty”. Let us briefly list the most important of these.