Thomas A. Edison Quotes
Not only will atomic power be released, but someday we will harness the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the rays of the sun.
Thomas A. Edison, 1847-1931, Inventor, Interview, August 22, 1921
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Rutherford had been the first to split the atom in 1919.
Of great surprise to most people, there were actual working solar powered engines invented in the latter part of the 19th century. In this famous demonstration, Pifre printed with a large rotary printing press 500 copies of a new magazine. The printing press was powered by a 2 horsepower steam engine which in turn was driven by the solar heat from a parabolic “dish” which focused the sun’s rays on a 50 gallon boiler. Despite a cloudy day, the solar engine took only 50 minutes to heat to a boil and then printed all afternoon. Much of the most effective uses of Solar power uses the concentrated heat of the sun to heat water or some other substance like this device. The vast majority of the hot water heaters in Israel function on this principle—no electricity or any other fossil fuel. John Ericsson of America also developed workable solar engines {635005}. Coal was the fuel that powered steam engines and would do so for electrical generators until oil was discovered. The coal, oil and gas was less expensive however but there were areas that did not have fuel and before oil and gas were discovered, these men thought that at some point the coal would run out. The only reason that the solar engines of the time were more costly where fuel was available is that no one realized the huge environmental consequence of the fossil fuels. Today we do realize that but do not charge the oil and gas companies and consumers to cover the costs of fixing what we know about and are able to remedy. Solar powered equipment is not a modern invention however and has been with us for well over a century.
There was massive opposition to nuclear power in most countries of the world except France where the operators and technicians are so well trained and there are such high safety standards that the public had confidence in the nuclear management that did not exist in most other countries.
Statement when Chile built the first large scale Solar Powered Electric Generating facility in one of its deserts. The cost of electricity was less than half of that of the then existing generation with carbon based fuels like oil or natural gas, It was a major breakthrough bacuase while solor power was always clean and infinte, it had been more expensive to generate than carbon based power sources. The consinuous improvement in the solar collecting techno;ogy, the large scale of the Chlean facility and the terrific desert location combined to not only make solor power less expsnsive, but much less expensive than fossil fuels.
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman who has been described as America's greatest inventor. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
