Dataciencia

Colección SciELO Chile

MARIA TELKES, GIORGIO NEBBIA and Promotion of an International Network of Solar Studies (ca. 1955)

Indexado

Scopus

SCOPUS_ID:85188832019

DOI

Año

2022

Tipo

Citas Totales

Autores Afiliación Chile

Instituciones Chile

% Participación
Internacional

Autores
Afiliación Extranjera

Instituciones
Extranjeras

Abstract

In 1953, Giorgio Nebbia (1926–2019) wrote to Maria Telkes (1900–1995), asking her for information about the solar distillation of water. After this, an interchange of papers and letters was generated, including those discussing the preparation of the first international congress on solar energy, which took place in 1955. The archives of Luigi Michelleti Foundation in Brescia, Italy, holds correspondence between Nebbia and Telkes which demonstrate that, in the 1950s, solar energy was again considered as an alternative source of energy, after several decades of being forgotten. The 1955 congress represented an attempt to launch this kind of energy resource, although it seemed that interest would be centred on nuclear energy and fossil fuel energy. Nevertheless, a relevant network of solar energy researchers around the world developed highly interesting work. In this paper, we aim to discuss an example of the origin of the International Network of Solar Research through the Nebbia-Telkes correspondence, the development of expertise, and circulation of knowledge in the middle of the twentieth century.

Revista

Revista	ISSN
Icon	1361-8113

Disciplinas de Investigación

WOS
Sin Disciplinas

Scopus
Management Of Technology And Innovation
History And Philosophy Of Science

SciELO
Sin Disciplinas

Muestra la distribución de disciplinas para esta publicación.

Publicaciones WoS (Ediciones: ISSHP, ISTP, AHCI, SSCI, SCI), Scopus, SciELO Chile.

Colaboración Institucional

Muestra la distribución de colaboración, tanto nacional como extranjera, generada en esta publicación.

Autores - Afiliación

Ord.	Autor	Género	Institución - País
1	Roca-Rosell, Antoni	-	Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - España
2	Arellano-Escudero, Nelson	-	Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano - Chile

Muestra la afiliación y género (detectado) para los co-autores de la publicación.

Financiamiento

Fuente
U.S. Department of the Interior

Muestra la fuente de financiamiento declarada en la publicación.

Agradecimientos

Agradecimiento
Since your last letters, given the results of your experiments, several developments have been noteworthy here. You probably received an invitation from Stanford Research Institute, Stanford, California, to a Symposium on Solar Energy in November 1955. I gave your address to Stanford Research Institute and you probably will receive a visit from one of their staff members in the near future. This Symposium will be very helpful for further studies on solar energy conversion. I have spent a month in California as a consultant of Stanford Research Institute and have also visited the experiments of the University of California, where the sea water conversion is in progress under Dean Everett D. Howe. I have designed the solar stills, which are on the sea shore of the San Francisco Bay and they have been in continuous operation for more than two years. These stills occupy 1000 sq. ft. area and a complete paper on their operation will be published by Dean Howe. He is continuing this work with help from the State of California, where water shortage is very important in some parts of the State. Dean Howe is doing this work in a very efficient way and with excellent apparatus. It was a specially rewarding moment to see the water flow in a steady stream from these solar stills. I am now working on a Project of improving solar stills at New York University, with the help of a contract with the Saline Water Program of the U.S. Department of the Interior (Washington 25, D.C.). I suggest that you write to them and ask for information about this program. They have issued an Annual Bulletin, which describes the aims and the work of this program.

Agradecimiento

Since your last letters, given the results of your experiments, several developments have been noteworthy here. You probably received an invitation from Stanford Research Institute, Stanford, California, to a Symposium on Solar Energy in November 1955. I gave your address to Stanford Research Institute and you probably will receive a visit from one of their staff members in the near future. This Symposium will be very helpful for further studies on solar energy conversion. I have spent a month in California as a consultant of Stanford Research Institute and have also visited the experiments of the University of California, where the sea water conversion is in progress under Dean Everett D. Howe. I have designed the solar stills, which are on the sea shore of the San Francisco Bay and they have been in continuous operation for more than two years. These stills occupy 1000 sq. ft. area and a complete paper on their operation will be published by Dean Howe. He is continuing this work with help from the State of California, where water shortage is very important in some parts of the State. Dean Howe is doing this work in a very efficient way and with excellent apparatus. It was a specially rewarding moment to see the water flow in a steady stream from these solar stills. I am now working on a Project of improving solar stills at New York University, with the help of a contract with the Saline Water Program of the U.S. Department of the Interior (Washington 25, D.C.). I suggest that you write to them and ask for information about this program. They have issued an Annual Bulletin, which describes the aims and the work of this program.