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Re: Solar Energy
Stephen Lajoie <lajoie@eskimo.com> wrote:
>Solar energy dates back to the 1970s when it became popular politically.
It does? I thought the sun was much older than that :-)
Edward Morse patented what is now known as the Trombe wall in 1881.
I have an old book about "it" called _The Source and Mode of Solar Energy
Throughout the Universe_, by I. W. Heysinger, M.A., M.D, published by
J. B Lippincott in 1895.
Dr. Heysinger begins:
In endeavoring to present a new and rational interpretation of the
source and mode of solar energy, based upon the established
principles of recent science, it becomes necessary to briefly cite
the facts bearing upon the problem to be solved and the authorities
for their support, as well as to describe concisely the different
hypotheses at present in vogue, and to point out the well-established
insufficiency of these theories, one and all, to account for or explain
the difficulties encountered, and which so far have remained as an
unsolved enigma. And this problem of solar energy is the grandest and
most important problem of all physics, for upon the light and heat of
the sun depend all physical life and its consequences, animal and
vegetable, past, present and future. If within finite time, and relatively,
compared with the enormous vistas of the past, a very brief time, this
source of energy is to cease, and our whole system be involved in darkness
and death, such darkness and death must be eternal; for the dead sun
in his final stage of condensation will be as fixed and unchangeable
as the operation of eternal laws can make it, and henceforth there can be
no revival or reversals, no turning back of the hand upon the dial,
while the laws of nature continue; and outside the uniform operation
of the laws of nature there is no source, or mode, or continuance of
solar energy conceivable. It is true that when our system shall have
run down to its culmination in death, other present systems may continue
for a time to exist and new ones spring into being; but these, too,
must inevitably follow the same course, and likewise end in eternal
darkness, until finally the great experiment of creation shall have
ended in eternal failure.
Nick