“The novel of a sunray” was written by Mallat de Bassilan and published in 1885.
This novel contains some brilliant and visionary quotes about the use of solar energy.
“The giant star sends us in eight minutes with a speed of 75,000 leagues per second its heat, equal to that which would result from eleven quatrillions six hundred thousand billion tons of coal burning together … […] Thanks to the ‘The huge temperature of its blast furnaces, the sun, which is an excellent engineer, has a force equal to the work of 217 trillion 316 billion horsepower […]
This is what the scholar Mr. Brion reminds us before pursuing in a surprisingly visionary way:
“It is by means of these pieces of sun that the carriages march without water, that the ships sail without veils, that the lamps light without oils. […] The forests are burning up, the coal mines are running out; it is probable that our descendants, driven by the need for a more intense life, will use solar energy directly, of which, however, the earth does not stop the half-billionth part of the total radiation! ”
Forty-six years after the discovery of the photovoltaic effect by Edmond Becquerel, Mallat de Bassilan predicts future inventions powered by solar energy. For instance, the first grid-connected commercial photovoltaic system was introduced in California in 1990.
