m from the solar motor, after being routed through a condenser, rapidly cooled the inside of a separate insulated compartment. He explained the result: "In spite of the seeming paradox of the statement, [it was] possible to utilize the rays of the sun to make ice." Mouchout was awarded a medal for his accomplishments.By 1881 the French Ministry of Public Works, intrigued by Mouchout's machine, appointed two commissioners to assess its cost efficiency. But after some 900 observations at Montpelier, a city in southern France, and Constantine, Algeria, the government deemed the device a technical success but a practical failure. One reason was that France had recently improved its system for transporting coal and developed a better relationship with England, on which it was dependent for that commodity. The price of coal had thus dropped, rendering the need for alternatives less attractive. Unable to procure further financial assistance, Mouchout returned to his academic pursuits.The Tower of Power During the height of Mouchout's experimentation, William Adams, the deputy registrar for the English Crown in Bombay, India, wrote an award-winning book entitled Solar Heat: A Substitute for Fuel in Tropical Countries. Adams noted that he was intrigued with Mouchout's solar steam engine after reading an account of the Tours demonstration, but that the invention was impractical, since "it would be impossible to construct [a dish-shaped reflector] of much greater dimensions" to generate more than Mouchout's one-half horsepower. The problem, he felt, was that the polished metal reflector would tarnish too easily, and would be too costly to build and too unwieldy to efficiently track the sun.Fortunately for the infant solar discipline, the English registrar did not spend all his time finding faults in the French inventor's efforts, but offered some creative solutions. For example, Adams was convinced that a reflector of flat silvered mirrors arrange...
