APRIL 24: A Higher Power 

Profile America — Sunday, April 24th. On tomorrow’s date 68 years ago, Bell Laboratories in New York announced the prototype manufacture of a new solar battery, or what we now call a solar cell. The new cell was capable of a 6 percent energy conversion efficiency with direct sunlight, as opposed to about a 1 percent rate with earlier creations. In the 1954 demonstration for the press, the Bell inventors placed the array of several small silicon strips in sunlight. The cell captured the free electrons and turned them into electrical current, powering the rotation of a 21-inch Ferris wheel. In America today, solar energy heats some 249,000 homes. Solar panels are manufactured by 9 domestic businesses, with annual industry revenue of over $200 million and rising. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at www.census.gov.

Sources:

Joseph Nathan Kane, Kane’s Famous First Facts, Fifth Edition, H.W. Wilson Co., New York, NY 1997, #3558

Contemporary story, accessed 8/27/2021

Ferris wheel, accessed 8/27/2021:

Household solar power, American Community Survey

Solar panel manufacturing in the U.S., accessed 11/20/2020

Revenues, access 11/20/2020