[SustainableTompkins] Solar Energy Historian & Author Coming to Ithaca

[Patricia Haines]

great work Joey!

Joey Gates <earthdayithaca at yahoo.com> wrote:  
Dear Sustainability Community Members;

Though it is only December, April is quickly on its way. And we all know what that means
..Earth Day! The Center for Environmental Sustainability (CES), in partnership with Cornell University and Ithaca College, has invited author and historian John Perlin to speak at several venues in Ithaca from April 23rd through the 26th, 2008. Perlin is the author of three books - A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology, A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization and From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity. His books offer an over 2500 year historical perspective on the cultural, economic and political changes involved in energy shortages. (see more detailed descriptions of his works below)

We are looking for interested groups and individuals to help make Perlin’s visit a success. If you would like to help with this event, or if you have suggestions about other interested groups and/or individuals to contact, please email or ring me at (607) 351-0664. Thank you so much. We appreciate your support and look forward to working with you.

Best,

Joey Diana Gates
Coordinator, Earth Day Ithaca

John Perlin’s first book, A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology (1980, co-authored with Ken Butti), describes the major advances in solar architecture and technology since the Greeks began designing their homes to capture winter sunlight 2500 years ago.
His research for A Golden Thread suggested that reliance on solar energy was often a response to shortages of wood for fuel. This insight led to his second book A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization (1991), which recounts how wood, the principal fuel and building material from the Bronze Age through the 19th century, played a major role in the culture, demographics, economy, internal and external politics, and technology of the great civilizations of Sumer, Assyria, Egypt, China, Knossos, Mycenae, Classical Greece and Rome, Western Europe, and North America. Harvard University Press has chosen A Forest Journey as one of the Press’ “One-Hundred Great Books” of all time. After five printing runs at Harvard University Press, a second edition has recently been published by The Countryman Press. A Forest Journey so impressed natural history photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum that he asked the author to write the essay to his retrospect, The
Legacy of Wildness: The Photographs of Robert Glenn Ketchum. 
Perlin's third book, From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity (2002), covers the step-by-step development of solar cells and their applications. Perlin is also a principle writer and producer of a recently released documentary titled Power from the Sun: A Century since Einstein's Photon/Fifty Years of Modern Photovoltaics which features Nobel Laureates Drs. Walter Kohn and Alan Heeger. http://powerofthesun.ucsb.edu/



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