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If the first solar entrepreneur hadn't been kidnapped, would fossil fuels have dominated the 20th century? (techxplore.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The first commercial PV solar product was nah just in 1909.

See story above, and original article in Modern Electrics magazine in 1909:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051407073

EDIT

Since people didn't read past the headline, the article is about a startup company in 1905 that developed a commercial electrical solar panel by 1909 and was worth 160 million in today's money.

In 1909, the inventor of the solar panel was kidnapped and ordered by his kidnappers to destroy all information about this solar panel. He was eventually released, although he did not destroy the solar panel or his documentation, he did shut down his company.

So this is a pretty fascinating development considering that at this time period we actually did have early production electric cars that were manufactured in larger quantities than gas vehicles, and now we learn that solar panels were commercially available, at least for a short time.

And the solar panels could generate a fair amount of electricity:

500 volts per 10 square ft, and a smaller demonstration panel that was 3 ft x 4 ft could generate 60 watts of power (10 volts @6 amps).

Additionally, the panels were designed to charge a battery backup system.

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it would have played out roughly the same. Energy density of fossil fuels is ahead of everything, along with it's portability. Not to mention no one knew or cared about environmental issues then.

Might have made the transition easier though.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some cared or questionned it. A local newspaper which is more than a century old, republished some old articles. One of those was about the coal consumption, how luch they comsumed back then, and how it would be consumed in the incoming decades, and asked what was going to be the outcome.

In the 30s, some english scientist pointed the raise of temperature too. It was minimal, but visible.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Exxon had detailed climate change predictions in the 1970s:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063