Did Eddington Fake Einstein's Proof?

In 1919, photographs of a total eclipse made Albert Einstein famous around the world. Sixty years later, a different story was told: that the astronomer behind them, Arthur Eddington, saw what he wanted to see. On 29 May 1919, on an island off West Africa, Eddington changed photographic plates in the dark for 302 seconds and hardly saw the eclipse. Why should light bend at all, why did Einstein's number double between 1911 and 1915, and what do the plates, the notebooks and a 1979 re-measurement actually show? Chapters 0:00 The question, and 302 seconds of darkness 2:01 Does light fall? 5:33 The luckiest failure 6:41 The Quaker and the Astronomer Royal 8:56 Two ships 10:42 The day 12:55 Reading the plates 14:53 The verdict 16:15 The accusation 17:20 The second investigation 18:54 What made it science Sources Primary F. W. Dyson, A. S. Eddington and C. Davidson, "A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun's Gravitational Field, from Observations made at the Total Eclipse of May 29, 1919", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 220 (1920), pp. 291-333 F. W. Dyson, "On the Opportunity afforded by the Eclipse of 1919 May 29 of verifying Einstein's Theory of Gravitation", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 77 (1917), pp. 445-447 A. S. Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation (Cambridge, 1920), chapters VI and VII Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th edition (London, 1730), Query 1 J. G. von Soldner, on the deflection of a light ray by a heavenly body, Astronomisches Jahrbuch für das Jahr 1804 (Berlin, 1801), pp. 161-172 G. M. Harvey, The Observatory 99 (1979), pp. 195-198 (the 1979 re-measurement of the Sobral plates) A. Einstein, "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light" (1911) and "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" (1916), in The Principle of Relativity, tr. W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery (London, 1923) A. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, tr. R. W. Lawson (London, 1920) A. Einstein, "Time, Space, and Gravitation", The Times, 28 November 1919 The New York Times, 10 November 1919 Scholarly Daniel Kennefick, "Not Only Because of Theory: Dyson, Eddington and the Competing Myths of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition" (2007), arXiv:0709.0685 Daniel Kennefick, "Happy 40th, Einstein!" (Princeton University Press, 2019) Jeremy Shears, arXiv:1309.5205 (Cortie and the 1914 eclipse; British astronomy and the war) Peter Coles, "A Revolution in Science: the Eclipse Expeditions of 1919", arXiv:astro-ph/0102462 (version 2, 2022) J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson, MacTutor History of Mathematics: Arthur Eddington; Erwin Freundlich; Urbain Le Verrier; the International Astronomical Union Path of the eclipse: Fred Espenak, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center eclipse tables The Armistice of 11 November 1918: Wikipedia, "Armistice of 11 November 1918" 1919 plate scan: ESO/Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl/F. W. Dyson, A. S. Eddington, & C. Davidson, CC BY 4.0 Sobral photographs: Arquivo de História da Ciência, MAST / Observatório Nacional Sobral instruments photograph: C. Davidson (public domain) Portraits and pages (public domain): Bain News Service (Library of Congress); Scientific Monthly, 1920; Philosophical Transactions via JSTOR Early Journal Content (archive.org); A. S. Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation (1920), title page Map: coastlines from Natural Earth (public domain)