Solar-powered lamp and charger

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The very last episode in Neil MacGregor's history of humanity as told through the things that time has left behind. The director of the British Museum in London has spent the past year choosing objects from the museum's vast collection to represent a two million year story of humanity. Throughout this week he has been with objects that that speak of the great shifts in human organisation and thinking in the modern world. Here he describes the object that he has picked as his last; it's a solar-powered lamp and charger that he believes can revolutionise the lives of poor people around the globe. The portable panel can provide up to 100 hours of light after just 8 hours of direct sunlight. It can also charge mobile phones and help bring power to millions of people around the world who have no access to an electrical grid. Simple, cheap and clean - this is revolutionary technology for the future. Professor Nick Stern, the expert on the economics of climate change, describes the potential impact of new solar technology - and we hear examples of how the technology is being adopted in Africa and India. Neil explains why he has chosen a solar-powered lamp and charger as his final object - with examples of how it is already being used in rural Bengal and urban Kenya. Producer: Anthony Denselow

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.0	This series has been for me an exhilarating journey through 2 million years of
0:19.2	human endeavor, passion and ingenuity. We began in East Africa with a chopping tool, a roughly shaped
0:26.0	stone that allowed us to take control of our environment and to change both the way we
0:30.6	live and the way we think. And I want to finish with another tool, or more
0:35.3	precisely with a bit of technology that's also transforming the way we can live and think.
0:41.1	In East Africa where our story began but also in South Asia and in many other parts of the world.
0:47.0	It's a portable solar energy panel that powers a lamp.
0:54.0	In fact, it's sunshine, captured, harvested and stored,
0:59.0	to be taken out and used whenever and wherever we need it.
1:05.0	Now I can do my lesson till midnight because of solar light.
1:10.0	Previously I have to spend lots of time in the ration shop to collect kerosene oil for
1:17.8	used lamps at night for my study.
1:21.4	Now I can save my dime and money too.
1:25.0	Solar energy is at the heart of the new Industrial Revolution, the low-carbon Industrial Revolution, which is just beginning.
1:33.0	It's a revolution which will be enormously important in the history of mankind.
1:37.0	A history of the world in a hundred objects.
1:43.0	Solar power. solar-powered lamp and charger made in Shenzhen, Guangdong China in 2010.
2:10.0	Our hundredth object gives to people all over the world who have until now been off-grid,
2:15.8	that is without access to any Main's electricity supply, a quite new level of control over
2:21.2	their environment. Solar power, thanks to low-cost lighting and
2:25.6	power kits like the one I've chosen, is changing lives in many parts of the world,
	...

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