Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1901-04-13
RUN BY SUMS RAYS
a Solar Motor That is Now in Prac.
teal Operation
Ike A GREAT CONCAVE MIRROR
Focused Upon a Boiler and Gen.
crates Intense Heat.
WHAT 1T MAY ACCOMPLISH

Written for The Evening Star.
Scientific experts for many years have
been striving to devise means of setting
the sun to work. The problem has been
one of the most tempting and at the same
time one of the most eXasperating, owing
to its apparent simplicity. of any with
which scientists have struggled. Here,
blazing In the heavens, an ineXhaustible,
ineXtinguishable fire, was the great motor
of our system of worlds, doing the labor
of thousand planets. and yet man, with
all his ingenuity, could not get so much
as a horsepower of work out of this roar
ing furnace for any one OF his millions Of
minor purposes. Even as a practicable
warming appliance the blazing planet was
useless for many months of the year to
the greater part of the globe. Far-sighted.
patient philosophers prophesied that when
all earth's fuel should be used up necessity
would bring forth some invention to put
Old Sol in harness, or at least to concen-
trate his vagrant rays to the purposes or
the kitchen fire.
And now in the birth year OF the new
century the harness has been made and In
Los Angeles, Cal, a practical sun motor
Is making the orb of day do a satisfactory
amount of labor in pumping water. This
sun motor Is built on the principle OF con-
centrating the power of the suns heat rays.
The principle is an old one. Experiments
have been conducted in various parts OF
Europe for years with burning mirrors
OF one kind or another, but nothing on
the scale Of the machine just erected In
California has heretofore been attempted.
The capitalists who have constructed this
ingenious sun engine are not claiming that
1t embodies In its construction any Ideas
that are radically new; indeed, one of their
strongest claims for it's ultimate success
is based on the fact that it simply applies.
on large scale, principles that have had
acknowledgment in the scientific world for
a long time.
Simple in Design.
The whole plan Of operation is simple In
the extreme. although to the ordinary spec
tator the machine looks rather complicated
Primarily the motor consists of a great
concave mirror, which from a distance
looks like a giant windmill Of sparkling
silver This huge looking-gla could not,
from it's form, be made of a single piece OF
glass; even were this practicable on the
score Of size, but the 1000 pieces of glass
which make up the surface are Joined so
skllfully that the composite mirror has
every appearance of having been nodded
solid.
brella, the concavity being pointed, at an
angle, toward the sun. Six men standing
on each others shoulders would not span
the upper diameter of the reflector and at
the bottom it is half wide.
Its hundreds of little mirrors, each turned
to exactly the right angle, catch the solar
rays and reflect them upon boiler sup
ported by a Skeleton-like structure, a sort
of miniature bridge that spans the reflector
at its uppermost and widest circumference.
Central as 1t Is to these focused rays, the
boiler Is subjected to their combined en-
ergy. whereby terrific heat is generated.
Guided by Clockwork:
It is. Of course, essential that the mirrors
should be always so directed as to get the
full force Of the suns rays This is
achieved by an ingenious arrangement of
clockwork whereby the great structure is
guided to follow the sun, as that far-off
motive power supply traverses the face of
the heavens.
The contrivance is absolutely automatic
Having once started its operations in the