My work sends me looking for all kinds of things that I would never, if entirely directing my own research, be compelled to search and learn. I am grateful for this. This is how I learned about George Cove and his solar electric generator…a little known 1909 precursor to solar panels. The Resilience article “How to Build a Low-Tech Solar Panel?” goes into detail on Cove’s work.
With the picture caption of the photograph from the Resilience article, I was able to find two articles about Cove’s work at the time:
- Homer, René (1909). Harnessing sunlight. Modern Electrics. 2 (6): 243. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051407073&view=1up&seq=5
- Laughter, Victor (1910). Generating Electricity by the Sun’s Rays. Popular Electricity. 2(12): 804. https://archive.org/details/popularelectrici02chi/page/804/