PBS American Experience: The Sun Queen- chemical engineer & inventor Maria Telkes now playing

[Caribbeans]

The Sun Queen
SHE LIT THE WAY FOR SOLAR

PBS | AIRED APRIL 4, 2023

For nearly 50 years, chemical engineer and inventor Mária Telkes applied her prodigious intellect to harnessing the power of the sun. She designed and built the world’s first successfully solar-heated modern residence and identified a promising new chemical that, for the first time, could store solar heat like a battery. And yet, along the way, she was undercut and thwarted by her boss and colleagues — all men — at MIT.

Despite these obstacles, Telkes persevered and, upon her death in 1995, held more than 20 patents. She is now recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy. An unexpected and largely forgotten heroine, Telkes was remarkable in her vision and tenacity — a scientist and a woman in every way ahead of her time. Her research and innovations from the 1930s through the ‘70s continue to shape how we power our lives today.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/sun-queen/

Mar 30, 2023
In the winter of 1948, a family of three moved into a newly built house in Dover, Massachusetts with curiously large windows. The Dover Sun House, as it came to be known, was the brainchild of chemical engineer and inventor Mária Telkes, obsessed with harnessing the power of the sun.
No one had ever tried to survive a frigid New England winter in a home heated by nothing but the sun. The Nemethys were the first to try.