Passage II

Maria Telkes: The Sun Queen

[1]

About fifteen miles west of Boston, a 1949 photo captured the image of two women in overcoats talking as they stood in front of a house in Dover, Massachusetts. (17) The house, heated from the sun when it was out and shining, was the first of its kind. [A]

[2]

Ten years earlier—before the sun first warmed it’s chilly Dover home—Telkes had been studying how to use the sun’s energy to produce clean drinking water from salt water. Telkes had been working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before World War II began, and her reputation as a chemical engineer got the US government’s attention. The US military hired Telkes to design a water filtration system that could easily be used by sailors, stranded at sea. Her solar still, which removed the salt through vaporization instead of boiling, produced countless gallons of drinkable water and saved many lives.

[3]

After the war, Telkes went back to work at MIT on a much larger project, a home heating system powered only by sunlight. [B] Then, in 1948, she began work with Eleanor Raymond, an architect, who was designing a home for a sculptor named Amelia Peabody. Together, Telkes and Raymond, blended form with function, and the end result home dazzled architects and scientists alike.

[4]

[C] Its design improved on top of traditional solar-heating systems. By transferring heat from the air (instead of from rocks or water). The heat activated a chemical compound trapped between—an exterior glass wall and a series of metal walls, which served as the heating elements. This system could withstand winter months and, during hot summers, work in reverse by drawing in and transferring the heat from inside to outside.

[5]

[D] The successes of her solar still and solar house did not mark the end of Telkes’s career. She continued to find practical, innovative, and cost-effective ways to use the sun’s energy.