Calvin Souther Fuller - Solar Battery

Solar Battery

Working with Bell Telephone scientists Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson, Fuller diffused boron into silicon to capture the sun's power. In doing so, they created the first practical means of collecting energy from the sun and turning it into a current of electricity. The invention of the solar battery resulted in a 600% improvement in the ability to harness the sun's power into electricity. First, Fuller ensured that silicon was uncorrupted and pure. Then Fuller accomplished the diffusion of boron into silicon. The inventors used several small strips of silicon to capture sunlight and render it into free electrons. Bell Laboratories, who had funded the research, announced the prototype manufacture of a new solar battery.

Here is a story told by Calvin S. Fuller's oldest son Robert W. Fuller as part of the speech preparation for Calvin S. Fuller's May 2008 induction to the National Inventor's Hall of Fame: "In 1954 I was home from vacation from college to visit my parents. That night my father, Calvin Souther Fuller, came home with something that looked like a quarter with wires sticking out of it. This was a device that connected to a small electric windmill that stood on the table. He shined a bright flashlight on the quarter-like object, which was actually silicon solar cell, and the blades of the windmill started turning. It was so exciting to see the flashlight power the tiny windmill. While this device looked like a quarter to anyone else, it was actually the world’s first silicon solar battery - a device that later become known as the silicon solar cell."

The first public service trial of the Bell Solar Battery began with a telephone carrier system in 1955 in Americus, Georgia. By 1958, the US Department of Defense realized an extremely valuable application of this device as it deployed self-sufficient, power to vehicles and satellites in space.