Thanks, Jack. Actually, I just found it. It's a multi-parted document with graphics, which I just found buried in my bookmarks in an obscure niche.
Here's the link, and the first couple of paragraphs. Keep in mind that this document comes in multiple parts, so don't forget to click. Enjoy.
ingersoll-rand.com
FAC
ps - I just love those stories that begin with, "Not knowing it was impossible..."
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"SETTING LIGHT ON A NEW PATH"
by Cathy Handley
Not knowing it was impossible, Leslie Danziger went and did it--and optics and imaging will never be the same.
In the mid-1980s, Leslie Danziger was shopping for a solar power system for property she owned in New Mexico, and she was unhappy. After doing extensive research, she bypassed solar panels in favor of much more powerful systems featuring solar concentrators--devices that capture and concentrate sunlight into a small area so it can be converted into useful energy. But the available solar concentrators were too costly and complicated. They relied on expensive mirrors and motors, as well as elaborate computer-controlled tracking mechanisms to allow the mirrors to follow the arc of the sun across the sky.
"In talking with solar engineers, I saw that a solar technology vacuum existed," says Danziger, then an executive with a consulting firm, Arctic Communications Corporation. What she needed was a way to enable solar concentrators to track the sun without moving parts. "So I decided to try and figure out a more efficient, lower-cost technology route to solar power."
Continued at:
ingersoll-rand.com |
