ABSTRACT
It is in Washington that several of the streams in solar science meet in turbulent confluence. To the orthodox in the laboratories of universities and industry, Washington is a fount of funds, if not wisdom. Their science is like a premature child thrust into the world before it has grown to viability. It must be protected if it is to survive; only public money can provide the incubator. It is in Washington that the paying public finds its outlet, bringing pres sure to bear upon its elected representatives so that they may speed the course of scientific inquiry and, hopefully, hasten the advent of its benefits. Then there are the heterodox, those who claim that the time for solar energy will not come five years from today nor in the year 2020 but now. They are heard in the halls of power, all the more clearly because the most prominent of their number, Dr. Harry Thomason, lives in a Washington suburb, occupying a solarheated house for all to see, note, admire, or criticize. He has come under heavy attack from certain members of the scientific com munity but he needs no sympathy; he has repaid them many times over. In his public statements as well as in his way of life, Thoma son is the leading folk figure in solar energy, a pole of attraction
for all those who want to believe that ingenuity in a home work shop can achieve results faster than Ph.D.’s on government grants.
