Solar energy celebrates 50th anniversary

["F A B I O C C H I::" <eco_fabiocchi at tin.it>]

Solar energy celebrates 50th anniversary
Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. - Fifty years ago, two Oregon scientists stood on the wide,
green lawn of Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey to announce the world
finally had a way to turn sunlight into electricity.
Daryl Chapin, an electrical engineer, and Gerald Pearson, a physicist,
joined chemist Calvin Fuller on April 25, 1954, to demonstrate the first
practical solar cell made of silicon - later to become the prime ingredient
in computer chips.
But it had taken more than a century since French experimental physicist
Edmund Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect in 1839 before the
process that converts light into electricity could be commercialized with
the technology developed by the Bell Labs trio.
"An amazingly simple-looking apparatus made of strips of silicon showed how
the sun's rays could be used to power ... a transistor radio transmitter
carrying both speech and music," the original press release from Bell Labs
said.
Mr. Chapin and Mr. Pearson were both graduates of Willamette University in
Salem, which awarded them honorary doctorates for their work in 1956.
Their research with Fuller built on the theories about the photoelectric
effect that won the Nobel Prize for Albert Einstein in 1921.
The trio were originally searching for a solution to battery problems within
the Bell telephone system when they created a solar photovoltaic cell
capable of generating enough power from the sun to run electrical equipment.
"It was a modest application at first - they were just trying to power a
small radio," said Alice E. White, director of integrated photonics research
at what is now Lucent Technologies Bell Labs.
A half century later, solar cells power everything from wallet calculators
to the Mars Rover.
They have also significantly reduced the cost of energy as the technology
has been refined.
"At the time, manufacturing costs were over $1,700 (U.S.) per watt. But
costs fell to $20 per watt by the 1970s and are now about $3 per watt," said
Christopher Dymond, solar specialist for the Oregon Department of Energy.
In addition, a little reverse engineering has made photovoltaic cells
essential to the Internet.
By reversing the process and converting electric signals into light, data
and other types of communication signals can be carried over high-capacity
fibre optic lines that link high-speed networks.
"The Internet backbone wouldn't be possible without fibre optics switched
with photodetectors," said Adam Grossberg, a Bell Labs spokesman.