The Power of Light

Not until the industrial revolution, with its insatiable demand for fuel, that modern inventors - like Prometheus carrying fire from Mt. Olympus - began to build machines capable of channeling the sun's rays into usable energy.The Power of Light is a dramatic narrative of those Prometheans and their furious technological quest to create the ultimate "Sun Machine." Told with a fervent passion, and without chastising or proselytizing, the story opens during the last gasps of the industrial revolution. With its grimy cities, its black and billowing smokestacks, it was a time for the realization of previously unimaginable projects, a time that gave birth to a cornucopia of new inventions and visionary dreamers - some bound for immortality, and others whose genius would be forever shrouded in obscurity.In this original investigation into a little-known chapter of the history of science, we follow the story of Frank Shuman, a Brooklyn-born, self-educated inventor who dreamed up a 1000-horse-power solar-powered behemoth to pump the Nile River onto parched Egyptian cotton fields - a dream that would be deferred, overshadowed by the hand of fate and the bugle-call of world war. Along Shuman's path, we meet the luminaries of solar invention - Augustin Mouchot, William Adams, Aubrey Eneas, and a host of others - all the while tracing the incredible saga of solar power from its roots in ancient history to its optimistic dawning in the industrial age to its impending triumph today.