Solar energy has come a long way since humans in the 7th century B.C. would harness sunlight via magnifying glass to light fires.
Today we’ll step back in time and drag out some interesting events in the history of solar energy.
SPACE ODDITY
Satellites have been using solar power since the 1950s! In 1958, the year that Lego was patented and the Smurfs made their first appearance, the Vanguard I satellite was launched. It used solar to power its radios. It only needed a small, one-watt panel. Following Vanguard I in the same year, the Vanguard II, Explorer III and Sputnik-3 launched into space with solar technology aboard.
THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN
The year is 1973 – The Vietnam War was winding down and the Watergate scandal was ramping up. In the same year the University of Delaware was tasked with constructing the first solar building. It was to be called “Solar One.” It ran on a hybrid supply of solar PV and thermal.
DUMB THINGS
In 1979, the year that Margaret Thatcher became the UKs first female PM and Sony introduced the Walkman, and the US President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roofs. This was a massive leadership move that could have catalysed a nationwide movement. Alas, a couple of years later when Ronald Reagan came into power he immediately ordered the solar panels to be removed. The good news is that 30 years later Obama had a solar system installed and now the American President can say they’ve caught up with the times. At least in that aspect.
LEARNING TO FLY
In 1981, the music channel MTV began broadcasting in the United States by broadcasting its first video, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. Later that year IBM released their PC onto the market. And to the point of this article, the intrepid creator and adventurer Paul MacCready built the first solar aircraft and flew it from France to the U.K. He gave it the moniker “Solar Challenger”.
HIGH HOPES
1998 was a good year. The fear-mongering over the “world ending” Y2K bug had started to ramp up and Titanic became the first film to gross over 1 billion worldwide. Do those things make it a good year? Maybe. But in the advance of solar and what it is capable of, the remote-controlled solar airplane “Pathfinder” was given flight and was able to set an altitude record when it surpassed 80,000 feet! NASA broke that record a few years later in 2001 when they hit 96,000 feet.
WE ARE THE WORLD
2016 – that wasn’t so long ago – or was it? Some days it feels like yesterday. There were a ton of celebrity deaths including David Bowie, Prince and Muhammad Ali. It was also the year that a reality TV host was voted into the presidential office in the USA. Something that happened in the world of solar which was pretty extraordinary – Bertrand Piccard completed the first zero-emissions around the world flight. His aircraft was named Solar Impulse 2, and as the name suggests, it was solar powered.
This article was brought to you by enewabl, the solar energy specialists.
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