Page 30 - ISES SWC50

Shuman’s power plant achieved an output of 55 horsepower and, given the coal prices in Egypt at the
time, was also competitive with fossil fuel power plants. This plant used an insulated tank to store hot
water to allow the plant to run 24 hours a day. Schuman also formed the Sun Power Company A year later,
the German government commissioned Shuman to build a much larger power plant in the then colony of
German Southwest Africa, now Namibia. However, the outbreak of the First World War prevented the
plans from being realized.

1949
• Felix Trombe built a large parabolic dish in France to produce very high temperatures for research purposes.

4.4 Solar Architecture Buildings Pre 1950

Ancient times-BC.
• 2000 b.c. the Chinese developed the gnomon (sticks or rocks perpendicular to the ground) and used this
to track the movement of the sun. In the Zhou Dynasty (before 12 century b.c.) the government instructed
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builders to use gnomon to determine where what we now call solar noon was at the equinoxes and
solstices and by 7 century b.c. positioning buildings to face true south.
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• Socrates in ancient Greece promoted that houses should be pleasant to live in and be cool in summer and
warm in winter by having buildings that provided shad when the sun was high and provided warmth on
porches when sun was low. Archaeologists found a rectangular building near Athens, where Socrates
lived, that faced south with the entrance and courtyard in that direction and the main rooms on the north.
• Olynthus was northeast of Athens . Around 345 b.c. a new district was created in area called North Hill.
The streets ran east-west so that the houses could be built facing south. They streets were spaced wide
enough so that they would all get the winter sun.
• Vitruvius was a Roman architect in first century b.c. and is believed to have visited Greece as a military
engineer . He wrote The Ten Books of Architecture and in this he advised architects and builders in more
temperate parts of the Roman Empire that : “ buildings should be thoroughly shut in rather than exposed
towards the north, and the main portion should face the warmer(south) side”
• Pliny the Younger a wealthy official had two Villas that were built to make full use of the sun and it appears
to save money by being able to have a smaller furnace and fewer heating ducts. One of his Villas made
full use of the sun with respect to heating and light and also had an underground room to escape the
hotter summer days. However, he had one room called a heliocaminus (solar furnace) where it appears
the southwest openings had glass or thin transparent stones. These materials would trap the heat and
temperatures would rise.

1 to 4 century AD.
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• The famous Roman bathhouses in the first to fourth centuries a.d. had large south facing windows to let in
the sun’s warmth.
• In a domus, a large house in ancient Roman architecture the atrium was the open central court with
enclosed rooms on all sides. In the middle of the atrium was the impluvium a shallow pool sunken into the
floor to catch rainwater from the roof.
• As early as the first century after the birth of Christ, there is a description of how the Romans tried to
grow cucumbers all-round the year (Hix, 1974). The Romans grew cucumbers in large pots with wheels
so that they could be easily pushed out into the sun. The pots were covered with a transparent material
as protection against the cold outside air and so that sunshine may be utilised more effectively. The
transparent material was talc which was cut into thin layers. The greenhouse effect was thus noted even
then, namely that transmission of short-wave solar radiation through glass and closely related materials is
high, while the long wave thermal radiation which is emitted, in this case from the pot, is not transmitted
so easily but rather kept inside.

600 AD
• Sunrooms on houses and public buildings were so common that the Roman Justinian Code initiated “sun
rights” to ensure individual access to the sun.

12 | ISES SWC50 - The Century of Solar-Stories and Visions