Posts Tagged ‘house’
Sun Power History Goes Back To Ancient Civilizations
Most people think that the use of the sun’s power goes back to only the collection panels we use today to charge our battery operated systems. Solar power history goes back to 400 BC.
Native Americans and Greeks were among the earliest users of the sun’s power. They used it for heating their homes. Romans learned that glass could aid in the collection of the sun’s rays.
The Romans took it a step further than heating for their homes and made crude greenhouses in which to collect the sun to grow plants and vegetables more quickly. It extended their growing season and gave them larger crops.
Native Americans were using solar power from around the year 400 BC. They built homes into the sides of mountains and hills so that they could capture the sun in the daytime. Then the heat would escape in the night and be collected once again in the daytime.
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.
Steam engines were developed next, but were not particularly efficient. They were expensive to run and difficult to keep running once they were started. There was still great potential in the sun’s power, though, so experimentation continued and a solar cell was invented in the 1800’s, beginning the practical solar power history.
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