What The Economist thought about solar power

WHAT APPEARS to have been our first article about solar power, in 1955, mostly dealt with water heaters, cooking stoves and the like. But it also noted, “among the more ingenious low powered devices…the Bell Company’s solar battery”—which is to say the first silicon-based solar cell, unveiled by AT&T’s Bell Labs the previous year. Indeed we were sufficiently impressed by this “simple-looking apparatus, consisting, in essence, of thin wafers of silicon, specially treated” (and pictured above) that in 1956 we featured it in an encomium to America’s remarkable research record: “Even an account of such diverse achievements as the Salk vaccine, the solar battery, the discovery and synthesis of the “miracle” drugs, the atom-powered submarine and the breeding of Santa Gertrudis cattle, would give only a small hint of work in progress.” (Quite how Santa Gertrudis cattle made it into this hall of fame remains a mystery.)