Exploring Fire to Electrons: The History of Harnessing Solar Power
From ancient civilizations using burning mirrors to light torches and light fires, to the silicon photovoltaic cell powering homes and businesses in today's world, from fire to electrons, the history of harnessing solar power is one of the most fascinating stories in human innovation.
The use of solar energy to heat water for our homes and create electricity without the use of fossil fuels is a recent technological innovation with great promise ahead. However, solar history and man’s attempts to harness power from the sun date back nearly 2,800 years.
Fire to Electrons: The History of Harnessing Solar Power — Key Milestones
This brief history is not just a story about science — it's the story of how renewable energy went from religious ceremonies and primitive lenses to solar PV panels on rooftops across the world.
Understanding this long history helps put today's modern solar technology in proper perspective.
Here is a brief look at the story of solar power:
700 B.C.
With the invention of the magnifying glass, humans soon learned they could use the lens to concentrate the sun’s rays to start fires.
Ancient civilizations across Greece, China, and Rome used similar techniques — including burning mirrors and polished metal. It is to light torches, light fires, and perform religious ceremonies. These were among the earliest deliberate attempts by humans to harness solar energy for practical domestic use.
The principle behind focusing the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass or burning mirrors to start fires is the same thermal concentration used in solar thermal installations and in today's concentrated solar power facilities, just on an enormously larger scale.
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The Archimedes Myth 214 B.C.
Stories passed down through history claim that the Greek inventor Archimedes created a heat ray system that destroyed the enemy ships with fire during the Siege of Syracuse.
Supposedly, a collection of mirrors or highly polished shields concentrated the sun’s rays into pinpoint laser-like beams that ignited the wooden vessels. Knowing what we know today about solar technology, the story is a fanciful myth.
While the Archimedes story is almost certainly a legend, the underlying concept — using burning mirrors to concentrate direct sunlight onto a single point to generate intense heat — has been verified as physically possible in modern experiments.
The same principle of concentrating the sun's energy is used in today's concentrated solar power facilities, where vast arrays of mirrors focus solar thermal energy onto a central tower to power ovens, drive turbines, and generate enough electricity to heat water and serve entire communities.
The First Solar Oven 1767
Swiss physicist Horace de Saussure is credited with creating the first solar oven in 1767. Two hundred and fifty years later, millions of people around the world use the same solar technology to cook their daily meals.
De Saussure's first solar oven used massive glass windows stacked in layers to trap the sun’s energy as heat — an early but remarkably effective demonstration of solar thermal principles.
His design was capable of reaching temperatures high enough to power ovens for cooking and to heat water, and it laid the conceptual groundwork for modern solar water heater technology used in homes around the world today.
If you live in an area prone to overcast skies, read our guide on How Solar Saves for Rainy Days to learn how your panels continue producing power
The technology developed by scientists at Bell Labs is now efficiently powering homes and businesses across the tri-state area. You don't have to wait for the future to start saving with clean energy.
Request a custom solar proposal from TerraSol Energies now, and we will evaluate your property.
The Discovery of the Photovoltaic Effect - 1839
French physicist Edmund Becquerel discovered that electrical voltage could be created when a material is exposed to light. That discovery would become the basis for creating solar power in the future.
Becquerel made this discovery at just 19 years old while experimenting with a conducting solution and metal electrodes submerged in liquid. When exposed to light, a weak electric current was produced — the world's first observed photovoltaic effect.
This fundamental breakthrough established that selenium creates electricity, and other materials could convert sunlight directly into usable electric current without combustion or moving parts.
Curious about your system’s performance at night or under heavy cloud cover? Read our article explaining exactly How Solar Works When It's Not Sunny to see how you stay powered 24/7.
Invention of the Photovoltaic Cell - 1883
Charles Fritts, an American inventor, is credited with being the first man to show how to make solar cells using selenium wafers.
Fritts coated selenium wafers with a thin layer of gold to form junctions and demonstrated that the element selenium could generate a continuous electric current when exposed to light. Working independently, Willoughby Smith discovered the photoconductivity of the element selenium in 1873 — a finding that directly contributed to Fritts’ work.
Though the efficiency of these early selenium wafers was less than 1%, they proved the core concept that would eventually lead to the silicon solar cell and modern solar PV panels.
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The Birth of Photovoltaics - 1954
Three Bell Laboratories scientists, David Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson, are credited with producing the first practical photovoltaic cell (solar cell). Others before them had produced solar cells, but they were all impractical because of a poor conversion rate of sunlight to electricity, at only 4%.
The Bell Lab scientists figured out a way to push that factor 11%, the conversion rate deemed necessary for the practical application of solar technology.
The New York Times reported that the discovery signaled the beginning of harnessing the sun's energy for domestic use on a meaningful scale. This moment marked the true birth of the solar PV panels industry as we know it today and was the foundation upon which all modern solar technology has been built.
Modern solar panels are incredibly efficient and capable of powering your entire home, but the technology took decades of innovation to reach this point. To see how far these systems have come since the very first photovoltaic cells, take a look at The History of Solar Energy!
In the decades that followed the first silicon photovoltaic cell, solar milestones came rapidly. In 1958, the U.S. Vanguard 1 satellite used a hybrid supply of solar and battery power — the first use of solar PV in outer space.
The Solar Challenger in 1981 became the first non-rocket aircraft powered entirely by solar electricity to cross the English Channel, setting an altitude record for solar flight. The remote-controlled solar airplane and early solar-powered steamboats further demonstrated the expanding reach of solar technology into transportation.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof — one of the most visible early endorsements of solar as a legitimate energy source for domestic use — and President Barack Obama reinstalled them in 2010, signaling renewed federal commitment to clean energy.
To learn how adding a battery system can drastically reduce your reliance on the grid, read A Strategic Guide to Residential Energy Storage to Save More.
Curious How This Technology Works for Your Property? Request a custom solar proposal now!
Today
Today, solar power farms dot the earth’s surface. These huge facilities use hundreds of thousands of mirrors aimed at a single collection tower to convert water to steam. The steam powers turbines that in turn power generators that create enough electricity to serve entire cities and towns through solar technology.
Once thought of as oddities, solar roof panels that convert solar energy to electricity for individual homes are commonplace now.
Solar technology has done much to reduce the world’s dependency on fossil fuels. Cleaner air and water are only two of the side benefits of harnessing the unlimited power of the sun instead of depleting the earth’s non-renewable fuels, coal, and petroleum.
Modern solar technology is now firmly part of the renewable energy mainstream. And the history of solar makes clear that this trajectory will only continue to accelerate.
The Future
Someday, our automobiles and trucks will probably be solar-powered. Solar-generated electricity will most certainly power more and more of our factories and homes, and solar engineers envision giant solar farms orbiting the earth to reflect the sun down to collection points around the world. What was once only solar fantasy is fast becoming reality.
TerraSol Energies has been part of this unfolding story since 2009 — bringing the long history of solar power to practical, everyday reality for homeowners and businesses across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. We are proud to help write its next chapter.
Contact us today at 888-873-9995 to learn how modern solar technology can benefit your home or business.
