How governments spurred the rise of solar power

IN 1954 AT&T’s Bell Labs announced, with some fanfare, a “solar battery”—a device which would supply electricity constantly, with no need for recharging, whenever it was illuminated. At a time when scientific miracles were much in vogue, the New York Times thought this gadget front-page news: the conversion of sunlight into electrical power might herald “the realisation of one of mankind’s most cherished dreams—the harnessing of the almost limitless energy of the Sun for the uses of civilisation.”