ABSTRACT
Oversized and overweight though they may have been, the two big trailers were but the easternmost tip of what was being done for the sun in Minneapolis by Honeywell and the University of Minne sota, working together. For several years Honeywell had made the biggest commitment to solar energy of any major American com pany while the university was contributing the talents of its heat transfer group. While the arguments raged over the pros and cons of solar concentrators as a power source, Honeywell and the uni versity were testing solar absorbing and reflecting surfaces in the desert of Arizona, the damp of Florida, and the extremes of Minne sota. Costs per square foot of flat collectors were another salient in the war of words that was being waged over heating and cooling systems in the halls of Congress and on editorial pages; in Minne sota, Honeywell was building collectors to see if it could make a living making them. In the persons of Roger Schmidt at Honeywell and Richard Jordan at the university, Minneapolis had two wellknown solar apostles. Another school was being heated there with the blessings and the budget of the National Science Foundation. It
was probably the best place to see how solar energy shaped up in the eyes of what is usually called Middle America.
