How long has solar power been around?
The photovoltaic effect was first recognized in 1839 by Edmund Bacquerel, in France. However it was not until 1883 that the first solar cell was built by Charles Fritts, who coated the semiconductor selenium with an extremely thin layer of gold to form the junctions. Several decades later, in the mid-1950s, the first practical solar cells were developed at Bell Labs and RCA Labs.
