Power from the Sun: Chapin, Fuller, Pearson and the Silicon Solar Cell | Kitson Teaches Pro, Book 4
Kitson Teaches Pro, Book 4: the story of Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller and Gerald Pearson at Bell Labs, whose silicon solar cell, shown in 1954, turned sunlight into useful electricity and started the road to today's solar power.
A regular book in plain, readable prose (35 pages, PDF), written for working professionals, engineers and curious adults. What is inside:
- How a solar cell works, explained properly: light, silicon and the junction
- From 2.3 percent to nearly 6 percent: how the team improved the cell
- The 1954 demonstration, and the first uses in space
- From a lab curiosity to hundreds of gigawatts a year, with sourced numbers
- What went wrong and what is disputed
- Lessons for engineers and professionals today
Every fact is sourced, and the full list of sources with access dates is at the back. Where sources disagree, the book says so.
The free video for this book is on the Kitson Workshop YouTube channel, in the Kitson Teaches Pro playlist. More at kitson-workshop.pages.dev
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