ca's energy problems. Still, experts do predict that solar energy could by the year 2000 replace three million barrels of oil a day, nearly half the nation's projected oil imports. Today, there are already some 5,000 buildings in the United states relying to some degree on active solar energy systems for heating and cooling, and much energy can be saved by the use of architectural design elements that contribute to solar use, such as better orientation of buildings and proper placement of evergreens and deciduous trees. Backers of solar energy point out that the term can be used to refer to a host of renewable energy producers, from simple wood-burning stoves to windmills to water power to biomass fuels to solar cells that can convert the sun's rays into electricity and beam it to earth as microwaves (photovoltaic technology) (Oatman, 1980: 138).
The history of solar energy in the United States can be traced back to the work of an engineer named John Ericsson in the early 1880s. In 1892, inventor Aubrey 'neas founded the Solar Motor Company of Boston to develop solar-powered motors to replace the conventional steam engine, and by the 1900s he had demonstrated a large solar-driven engine in California and opened an office there to sell engines. When his first engine failed, though, the company folded. The man considered to be the real father of solar energy in the United States was Baltimore inventor Clarence Kemp, who patented the first commercial solar energy heater in 1891. Two businessmen bought this invention in 1895 and founded a company in Pasadena, and the product became popular rather quickly so that nearly 30 percent of Pasadena homes had solar heating systems by 1897. A major technological advance came in 1908 with the invention of the kind of solar collectors that are the predecessors of the ones still in use today. By the end of World War I, more than 4,000 of these solar systems had been sold, but the industry ...