Wednesday, May 08, 2013
"New technology" yet again
More "new" technology. Researchers using graphene, a special form of carbon powder, have developed a flexible and efficient solar cell.
Not new. Already discovered in the 1890s, but not fully understood. Of course there was no pressure to apply the technique to "power", because coal-powered dynamos were already generating power reliably and efficiently. As they still do today. Also, governments at that time weren't stealing from the poor to subsidize a bizarre Gaian religion designed to destroy civilization. (To be sure, governments in Gilded Age 1.0 were stealing enthusiastically from the poor, but they didn't use strange religions to justify their crimes.)
Here's one account, from an 1895 textbook Electricity in the Service of Man: [p 784 of the PDF]
The carbon cell looks a lot like a modern strain gage. Note especially that the carbon cell was clearly generating a voltage when struck by light. It gave a louder signal than the selenium cell, and worked without a battery. The author believed the carbon cell was primarily responding to the heating effects of the light, but heat-driven expansion and contraction wouldn't have been nearly fast enough to reproduce speech. [Note also that the carbon cell was built with printed circuit techniques!]
The carbon cell looks a lot like a modern strain gage. Note especially that the carbon cell was clearly generating a voltage when struck by light. It gave a louder signal than the selenium cell, and worked without a battery. The author believed the carbon cell was primarily responding to the heating effects of the light, but heat-driven expansion and contraction wouldn't have been nearly fast enough to reproduce speech. [Note also that the carbon cell was built with printed circuit techniques!]Labels: 20th century Dark Age
¶ 3:14 AM
