Effectively forgotten

“We have proved the commercial profit of sun power. . . and have more particularly proved that after our stores of oil and coal are exhausted the human race can receive unlimited power from the rays of the sun.”

— Inventor Frank Schuman, 1916, as quoted in the New York Times: American Inventor Uses Egypt's Sun for Power — Appliance Concentrates the Heat Rays and Produces Steam, Which Can Be Used to Drive Irrigation Pumps in Hot Climates (uncredited author), 2 July 1916

In 1897 Frank Schuman prototyped a solar energy generator, to great acclaim. But, as Benjamin West, in his book Scale, observes, “The discovery and development of cheap oil in the 1930s discouraged the advancement of solar energy, and Shuman’s vision and basic design were effectively forgotten until the first energy crises of the 1970s.”