Edison on Sustainable Energy

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Edison on Sustainable Energy

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“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using natures inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ...

... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that”

Thomas Edison in conversation with
Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931)
unverified quotes

I came across some interesting, though unverified, quotes from Edison on sustainable energy, particularly solar energy and battery storage. One of the sources is a journal by an Elbert Hubbard which is in the public domain and freely available. I have given a link to this at the end. For what these quotes are worth, I share them here.


It is reported that Edison said …

"Some day some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I'll do the trick myself if some one else doesn't get at it. Why, that is all there is about my work in electricity - you know, I never claimed to have invented electricity"

"Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, but we will take that up later. Now the trick was, you see, to concentrate the juice and liberate it as you needed it. The old-fashioned way inaugurated by Jove, of letting it off in a clap of thunder, is dangerous, disconcerting and wasteful. It doesn't fetch up anywhere. My task was to subdivide the current and use it in a great number of little lights, and to do this I had to store it. And we haven't really found out how to store it yet and let it off real easy-like and cheap. Why, we have just begun to commence to get ready to find out about electricity. This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of--it is so wasteful. It is just the old, foolish Prometheus idea, and the father of Prometheus was a baboon."




"When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy."

"Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property.

"There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it can not be destroyed.

"Now, I am not sure but that my new storage-battery is the thing. I'd tell you about that, but I don't want to bore you..."

Original article :
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12933/12933-h/12933-h.htm#THOMAS_A_EDISON




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