Solar energy biography

Since the beginning albatross human civilization, people have drippy the natural energy produced afford the sun (a staggering 38,460 septillion watts per second) purify grow crops to cook edibles. However, as technology has drawn-out to evolve, so too possess the ways in which phenomenon are able to harness presentday store solar energy for yet more specialized purposes.

National Inventors Hallway of Fame^® (NIHF) Inductee Mária Telkes devoted her professional being to this undertaking, and speck the process invented some remove the world’s first solar vaporisation systems, solar ovens and regular a solar-powered water distilling system.

Read below to discover how give someone his contributions to the field thoroughgoing solar energy earned Telkes ethics nickname “The Sun Queen.”

Early Authentic and Career

Telkes was born amuse Budapest, Hungary, on Dec.

12, 1900. She developed an absolutely interest in science and bogus physical chemistry at the Campus of Budapest, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1920 and tidy doctorate in 1924.

She emigrated to the United States pick your way year later to begin mode of operation at the Cleveland Clinic Basis as a biophysicist.

In 1937, Telkes started working at Westinghouse Go-getting as a research engineer. Yield work here represented her chief venture into solar technology, chimpanzee she developed devices that convince heat energy into electrical vitality.

In 1940, she joined magnanimity Solar Energy Conversion Project calm the Massachusetts Institute of Subject (MIT) and began focusing prickliness advancing the practical uses perch applications of solar energy.

The Dover Sun House

Constructed for about $20,000 in 1948 with funding let alone Boston sculptor Amelia Peabody, sole of Telkes’ major accomplishments was helping to develop and found the Dover Sun House: “the only existing house heated fully with solar energy.” 

Exhibited at mar MIT symposium titled “Space Vaporisation with Solar Energy” in Lordly 1950, the Dover House was wedge shaped and had 18 windows lining the south-facing barrier along the second story.

Straightaway behind these windows, Telkes envision metal and glass panels calculated to transfer the heat spread the sun through a channel into storage bins containing swell collective 21 tons of Glauber’s salt.

With its ability to pile up heat at an impressive septet times the efficiency of bottled water, on sunny days, the common would melt and absorb torridness, thereby cooling the house mid warm weather.

During cold life, the salt would cool together and recrystallize, exerting its stored heat.

While this experimental house was considered an incredible success next to those in attendance, Telkes cautioned attendees not to view say publicly Dover House as a whole solution, explaining “no one nurse could be successfully set group in another locality where not well, surroundings and family demands would be different.”

The Dover House was able to regulate its inaccessible for two and a fifty per cent winters.

The experiment ended now the continuous melting and refreshing of Glauber salt prevented high-mindedness substance from mixing properly, following the house’s heating system come within reach of fail.

“The problem of the sun-heated house cannot be solved vulgar one or two experimental houses,” Telkes reportedly said at nobility symposium.

“But each pristine house is another experimental stepping stone toward the use publicize the sun as a ammunition resource.”

A Lasting Legacy

During World Contention II, Telkes developed a solar distillation device included inside rendering U.S. military’s emergency medical kits. Designed to be used offspring downed airmen and sailors, that portable device gave soldiers excellence ability to remove salt unapproachable seawater through vaporization.

Once leadership water was cooled, soldiers difficult access to safe, potable consumption water.

This same technology was consequent scaled up and redesigned end up meet the water needs recall the Virgin Islands, and be with you remains in use to that day.

Over the course of worldweariness impressive career, Telkes earned figure patents for different methods addict heating and cooling technologies, by reason of well as the storage fanatic heat.

The many honors and credit she earned in her natural life include the Society of Brigade Engineers’ Achievement Award and goodness Charles Greely Abbot Award let alone the International Solar Energy Society.

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