How a 100-year-old kidnapping set climate tech back decades
George Cove patented solar energy technology in the early 1900s. Then, after a mysterious kidnapping, his business shut down.
In 1954, Bell Labs created the first commercial silicon solar cell. But more than 40 years earlier, another inventor had launched a business to sell a “sun ray machine” for households. The early solar energy tech—which could power small household devices for a week, and had been demonstrated on rooftops in New York City—was lauded in the press. But then the inventor, George Cove, was kidnapped.
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