subject: Photovoltaic Power History Returns Back To Ancient Civilizations [print this page] Solar power history is not the recent history that most people think it is. Use of collection panels and battery charging systems may be recent, but use of the sun's power goes back to ancient civilization.
Ancient civilizations used the sun to heat their dwellings and grow their plants, as Native Americans, Greeks, and Romans went about their daily lives. Romans thought of the idea involving the capturing of sun through glass to make more pronounced use of it.
The glass panels were gathered into small greenhouse type outbuildings and seeds were planted and grown inside. Their season for growth was longer and they could start their gardens earlier than ever before.
The Native Americans and Greeks used the sun to heat their homes first. Their homes were built along the hillsides and used earth contact to maintain the heat. The homes were faced into the sun to collect the heat, then the warm air would leave the home and a new warmth would enter the dwelling in the new day.
Greeks used the sun in much the same way, although they did not get the idea from each other. Societies independently figured out that the sun was a useful resource that should not be wasted.
That was the extent of the use of the sun for several hundred more years. In the late 1700's a man named Horace de Saussare designed a device that collects sunlight. The collector cone gathered the sun to boil ammonia. The result was refrigerant. Scientists were enthralled with this new idea all the way throughout the 1800's.
The steam engine was the next major development in solar power history. The engine that was invented used expensive and difficult equipment, so it did not last long. Scientists continued to search and came up with a cell for collection that is similar to what we use today. That was in the late 19th century.
