Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the invention that made it all possible. A tremendous technological leap forward in its own right — perhaps one of the clearest points of demarcation between the the technology of the 20th and 21st centuries — this device showcased the kind of fundamental rethinking that we casually refer to as discontinuous change. It was the very epitome of the “paradigm shift” described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

And yet this invention, as critical a breakthrough as it was, proves to be only a stepping stone, a building block for something even bigger: a major step forward in how we can capture and use solar energy.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s have a look at the original, all-important breakthrough technology…