Who Discovered Solar Energy And Why Did We Take So Long?
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Solar power is the hot topic for our generation; but most of us have very little knowledge about who discovered solar energy and its history.
Solar power starts its story far earlier than many people would guess; back in 1839. Edmund Becquerel was from a family of physicists and noticed that during some light induced chemical reactions there was a detectable electrical current.
Some thirty years later the French monarch was keen to discover the practicalities of solar power and funded experiments by Auguste Mouchout. However, the French then managed to organize a deal to get coal from the English, and their interest in solar power died.
The quest was then taken on in 1873 but an Englishman, Willoughby Smith. Smith played around with the selenium solar cells; but his was not to be the name remembered for solar energy.
Just a couple of years later William Adams and his student Richard Day produced a book entitled 'A Substitute for Fuel in Tropical Countries'. This was the first book about solar power. These two managed to power a steam engine under the concept named the Power Tower. This concept is still used today.
The first person to turn the sun's heat into electricity was Charles Fritz. However, despite being a huge achievement, this hadn't had a great conversion rate and needed far more research.
There was Frenchman, Charles Tellier, who managed to heat the water in his house using solar power, but this was not his primary research interest and he soon lost interest.
So the twentieth century was ended with much different knowledge about solar power, but little success. To enhance the pressure John Ericsson had recently announced that he believed that there has to be time when the coal reserves of Europe would be completely exhausted.
The race was now on and the twenty first century opened with Henry Willsie managing to store power from the sun in the day and employ it at night in California. Many years later the Sun Power Co was placed in Cairo, however this was destroyed during the Great War.
There was little time for experimentation and research during the wars and therefore there was no progress until the nineteen fifties. However, once it started there was no stopping it. There was not only the creation of the first solar cell, there was also using solar technology in the space programs.
The OPEC oil embargo of 1970 meant that now there was not choice but to embrace all those who discovered solar energy properties and revisit their work to produce a future with light.
I guess among the important questions to be asked is 'was it necessary to get at this point'? If you look at all the people who discovered solar energy and how much they achieved; perhaps we should have taken note of their successes sooner.
Article Source: Articlelogy.com
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