The History of Solar, Part Two
Solar energy is renewable energy that surfaced in the 1800’s by a man called Auguste
Mouchout, who developed or created the first steam engine in 1861 which ran solely on the
sun’s energy.
Since the Ancient Greeks and Roman times, modern society has had as developers people such
as John Ericson, William Grylls Adams and Albert Einstein who each individually dabbled in solar
electricity. It was John Ericson who crafted the Parabolic Trough Collector, as well as created
the USS Monitor and introduced the armored solar ship into the US Civil War.
It was Albert Einstein who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics because of his research on
the Photoelectric Effect, which means obtaining electricity through the use of solar cells. As you
can see, even back then their dabbling into solar electricity had a positive effect on today’s
useful technology.
We have come a long way since Auguste Mouchout; William Grylls Adams created the first watt
of electricity by using electrons when light was captured upon the selenium solar cell.
By 1950, further progression was made when the use of solar power energy was used in
satellites and aircrafts by way of using solar panels for electricity that generated from the sun.
By the end of 1958, as technology advanced, the “Vanguard 1″ satellite system was launched
into space. This was the first “practical” system to be powered by solar energy and is still
orbiting today.
