What are Heliostats?
Heliostats are scientific instruments that track the progress of the sun across the heavens. Simple heliostats use an ordinary clockwork mechanism to follow the sun, while more complex heliostats track the sun directly by sensing its position in the sky or incorporate microprocessing software that compansates for the angle of the sun throughout the solar year. The word heliostat is a compound of the Greek word for ‘sun’, helios, and the word for ‘still’ or ‘stationary’, stat, and it appears to have been coined in the mid 18th century. As with many scientific inventions from that period, a number of inventors have been credited for the device, making it unclear who is actually responsible for it. Heliostats are most commonly used to position mirrors and reflect sunlight continuously in a specific direction, although strictly speaking, heliostat refers to the positioning device and not the mirror. The most frequent use of heliostats in the 18th century, when they became widespread, was t
