Farrington Daniels: Pioneer in the Use of Solar Energy as Appropriate Technology

Farrington Daniels (1889–1972), professor of physical chemistry at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), championed solar energy as an alternative energy source. While solar developments prior to Daniels were few and a mix of large and small-scale projects directed at industrialised and on industrialised countries, Daniels promoted the development and use of small, inexpensive, and easily constructed solar units, such as refrigerators, cookers, and stills, by rural inhabitants in nonindustrialised countries. His research and lecture trips made him familiar with living conditions in many of these countries and convinced him that the introduction of technologies that these societies seemed to need and easily could adopt was the best way to increase their self-reliance and improve their well-being. Daniels’s goal of finding the technology that best fit the situation, without causing environmental and social disruptions and problems, anticipated the spirit of the later, and independently developed, intermediate (appropriate) technology movement.