History
There are records of solar collectors in the United States dating back to before 1900, comprising a black-painted tank mounted on a roof. In 1896 Clarence Kemp of Baltimore, USA enclosed a tank in a wooden box, thus creating the first 'batch water heater' as they are known today. Although flat-plate collectors for solar water heating were used in Florida and Southern California in the 1920s there was a surge of interest in solar heating in North America after 1960, but especially after the 1973 oil crisis.
See Appendix 1 at the bottom of this article for a number of country-specific statistics on the "Use of solar water heating worldwide". Wikipedia also has country-specific articles about solar energy use (thermal as well as photovoltaic) in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Read more about this topic: Solar Water Heating
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)