What is the history of PV?
Highlights: In 1839, Edmund Becquerel of the famous French physicist family, discovered the photovoltaic effect. The material used was copper oxide in an electrolyte. In the 1860’s, Willoughby Smith discovered the photoconductive properties of selenium. In the 1870’s, W.G. Adams and R.E. Day investigated the photovoltaic properties of selenium. In 1874, Charles Fritts made the first solar cell from selenium and gold. The efficiency was less than 1%. In 1887, H. Hertz discovered the photoelectric effect in metals. In 1904, Albert Einstein published his monograph on the photoelectric effect. His theory utilized Max Planck’s idea of quanta. Notice that for almost a hundred years, from 1839 until the development of quantum theory in the 1920’s and 1930’s, there was no satisfactory scientific theory of solid state physics to explain the photovoltaic effect. It was an anomalous phenomenon, which some scientists considered a hoax. In 1954, Gordon Pearson discovered the photovoltaic properties
