History of Solar Advancements

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History of Solar Advancements

Our sun provides us with a virtually unlimited resource that we have used for centuries in a multiple of ways. We use it to keep us warm, to grow our food and generate millions if kilowatts of electricity. Everyday the sun showers the earth with more potential energy that we produce in that day or even that week. According to the Go Solar Company (1999-2003), ”on an acre of land with the sun overhead is receiving more the four thousand horsepower, which is equivalent to a large railroad locomotive, and in less than three days of the same intensity will match the estimated total of all fossil fuels on the earth”. Many of the visionaries I will be talking about explored almost all the renewable energy options familiar today, and in less than 50 year they (independent and jointly) developed an impressive array of technologies for harnessing solar radiation and converting it to energy in the way of steam to power the machines of their respective eras. You will see that prior to World War 1, they were using all of the solar thermal conversion methods now being considered, but after the War and for a better part of 50 years their work was nearly forgotten in the rush to develop fossil fuels for an “energy-hungery” world (Smith , 1995).

When the term “solar energy” is mentioned the common thought is of recent technologies, or rather a young approach to energy production, this in fact is not entirely true. What is true is that since the dawning of the space age solar-conversion used for energy production has grown with leaps and bounds but this technology has been around for some time. In fact the first documented usages of solar-conversion are found in the writings of Homer (Iliad and the...

... middle of paper ...

...e energy needs. As Frank Shuman declared more than 80 years ago, it is "the most rational source of power."

Work Cited:

History of Solar Energy. Broadcast on Sun. 16/12/00. Reported by

Alexandra de Blas: Interview of John Perlin. Internet: Online

Sept.16, 03. Bailey Howe lib. UVM

Available: www.abc.net/

“History of Solar Power”. Go Solar Company. L.A. California.

Copyright 1999-2003. Internet: Online Sept. 27, 03.

Bailey Howe lib. UVM. Available: www.solarexpert.com

Smith, C. History of Solar Energy: Revisiting Solar Power’s Past.

Tech. Review. July 95. Internet: Online Sept. 16, 03.

Bailey Howe lib. UVM. Available: www.solarenergy.com

“The History of Solar Energy”.The Solar Energy Science Project.

Environmental Portfolio. Penn State. 1999. Internet. Online Sept. 27, 03.

Bailey Howe lib. UVM. Available: www.personal.psu.edu

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