Augustin Mouchot

Augustin Mouchot was a French mathematics teacher and inventor who in the 1860s and 1870s built a series of solar-powered steam engines, including large parabolic solar collectors that could boil water and drive small engines for tasks like printing and refrigeration, motivated by concern that Frances coal supplies might eventually run short. Mouchot demonstrated his most advanced solar engine at the 1878 Paris Universal Exposition, where it successfully produced ice using only the suns heat, and he received government funding to develop solar power for French colonial use in North Africa where coal was scarce and sunlight abundant. Falling coal prices in the 1880s undercut the economic case for his invention and government support was withdrawn, ending his research before solar power could be commercially developed. Mouchots solar engines are regarded as among the earliest serious engineering attempts to harness concentrated solar energy as a substitute for fossil fuel.