1st Solar Cell Created 60 Years Ago (VIDEO)

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As we noted a couple weeks ago in a guest post from John Perlin, author of Let It Shine: The 6000-Year Story of Solar Energy, we’re coming up on the 60th birthday of the solar cell. “On April 25, 1954, scientists at Bell Laboratories demonstrated the most significant breakthrough in the history of solar energy — a solar cell capable of directly converting enough sunlight into electricity to generate useful amounts of power,” Renewables100 writes.

Below is a video of that special occasion.

It’s quite fun to look back on that and think about how far we’ve come, isn’t it?

Of course, plenty has changed since 1954. Just looked at these charts on solar’s massive price drop for some visual perspectives on the progress made in the past few decades alone.

solar graph welcome to the terrordome

Click here to embiggen.

price of solar power drop graph

Imagine where the solar industry will be in a few decades!

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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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