Solar Energy 75 (2003) 357366 www.elsevier.

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Historic background of desalination and renewable energies

E. Delyannis
*
Solar and Other Energy Systems Laboratory, National Center for Scientic Research (NCSR), Demokritos 513-10, Aghia Paraskevi (Athens), Greece Received 6 June 2003; accepted 7 August 2003

Abstract It is interesting to travel through the centuries re-discovering inventions that brilliant pioneers achieved though they lacked technological means. An historical overview may help to understand or even re-discover useful ideas that, with todays technology, can nd applications. In this paper we will try to traverse historical paths by highlighting the most important ideas and features developed from antiquity until today on desalination of sea and brackish water as well as of renewable energy utilization with special reference to the use of solar energy for desalination. 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction It is interesting to travel the paths of history and nd out that most modern applications have been, at least theoretically, expressed by very bright pioneer scientists and/or philosophers who analyzed physical phenomena but did not possess the technology to develop practical applications. In searching bibliographic references or historic documents one admires the eorts that scientists or engineers have made in the past. You may wonder why it is necessary to look back into the past? As engineers and scientists of the machine and computer era, we look toward future technological and economic developments. We promote technology for generations to come for the benet of humanity, exactly the same way pioneers did in the past. At least if nothing else history will teach us humility and humanism. We must not forget what the wise man of China, Confucius (551479 BC) once said: Study the past in order to predict the future. Think about a millennium later or even 500 years later, in 2500 AD. How primitive and nave the scientists of that Era will nd the tremendous scientic eorts of today. But also remember that it is because of the

pioneers and founders of science and technologys hard work, that we now practice the sophisticated technologies of today. History is our link to tomorrows achievements. Mankind recognized the potential of renewable energies from the dawn of humanity as useful or destructive forces. The sun was especially esteemed by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Incas. Later on the ancient Greek philosophers established that these natural forces could be tamed. Early antiquity was depending for energy supply mainly on the sun and additionally on wood products (let us say from biomass). Wind energy was used mainly as kinetic energy for sailing ships and for windmills. Todays conventional energy sources, such as fossil fuels and gas, were totally unknown. 2. Water and energy Water and energy are two inseparable items that govern our lives and promote civilization. Looking to the history of mankind, one nds that water and civilization were also two inseparable entities. It is not a coincidence that all great civilizations were developed and ourished near large bodies of water. Rivers, seas, oases, and oceans have attracted mankind to their coasts because water is the source of life. Examples abound illustrating the importance of water in the sustainability of life and the development of civilization. But the most

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important example of this inuence and birth of civilization is Egypt. The river Nile provided irrigation and soil, which was never exhausted, carrying a lot of mud every year. Egyptian engineers were able to master the river water and Egypt, as an agricultural nation, became the main wheat exporting country in the whole Mediterranean Basin. Due to the richness of the river, astronomy and mathematics, authority and discipline, law and justice, currency and police were created at a time when no other human society held this knowledge. On the other hand, energy is as important as water for the development of good standards of life because it is the force that puts in operation all human activities. Water is it self a power generating force. The rst conrmed attempts to harness waterpower occurred in the centuries before Christ. The energy gained was mainly used to grind grain (Major, 1990). 3. The desalination concept from pre-historic times to middle ages The rst written description of desalination is traced to the Old Testament (Vetus, M.Dc. XXVIII), in Exodus (about 1500 BC) 22 So Moyses brought the sons of Israel from the Red Sea and they went to the desert of Sour. And they marched three days in the wildness and they found no water to drink. And then they arrived to Merra and they could not drink from the 23 water of Merra, because they were bitter, therefore he 24 gave to the place the name Bitterness. And the people murmured against Moyses. Saying: What shall we drink? 25 and Moyses cried onto the Lord. And the Lord showed him a wood and he put it into the water and the water became sweet. It is conceivable that the wood mentioned above had ion-exchange properties. The Greeks were the rst to express philosophical ideas about the nature of water and energy. Thales of Militus (640546 BC), the rst of the seven wise men of antiquity wrote about water (Delyannis, 1960; Berthelot, 1888a) it is fertile and molded [Cmilom caq ersm o ja epkarsom]. The same philosopher said for seawater: t The immense sea that surrounds the earth is primary mother of all life. Later on Embedokles (495435 BC) developed the theory of the elements (Delyannis, 1960), describing that the world consists of four primary elements: Fire, Air, Water and Earth, which under our contemporary knowledge may be translated to: Energy, Atmosphere, Water and Soil, the four basic constituents

that aect the quality of our lives (Delyannis and Belessiotis, 2000). Of all philosophers of antiquity it is the well-known sage and scientist, Aristotle (384322), who described in a surprisingly correct way the origin and properties of natural, brackish and seawater. He writes for the water cycle in nature (Aristotle, 1956, 1962): Now the sun moving, as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the nest and sweetest water is every day carried out and is dissolved into vapor and rises to the upper regions, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular cycle of nature. Even today no better explanation is given for the water cycle in nature. Really, the water cycle is a huge solar energy open distillation plant in a perpetual operational cycle. For the seawater he writes (Aristotle, 1956, 1962): Salt water when it turns into vapor becomes sweet, and the vapor does not form salt water when it condenses again. This is known by experiment. Until medieval times no important ideas or applications of desalination by solar energy existed, but during this period, solar energy was used to re alembics in order to concentrate dilute alcoholic solutions or herbal extracts for medical applications, and also to produce wine and various perfume oils (Fig. 1). The stills or alembics were discovered in Alexandria, Egypt, during the Hellenistic period (Bittel, 1959). Cleopatra the Wise (Berthelot, 1888b), a Greek alchemist, developed many distillers as these in Fig. 2 (Bittel, 1959). The head of the pot was called ambix, which in Greek means the head

Fig. 1. A mediaeval time distillation laboratory for the production of herbal extracts, wine and oil perfumes.

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Fig. 2. The Cleopatras alembics: dbijo1 & sqbjo1 (two and three ambix).

of the still, but this word was applied very often to the whole still. The Arabs who overtook science and especially alchemy about the 7th century, named the distillers Al-Ambiq, from which came the name alembic. Mouchot (1869, 1879) the well-known French scientist who experimented with solar energy, mentions in one of his numerous books that during medieval times Arab alchemists carried out experiments with polished Damascus concave mirrors to focus solar radiation onto glass vessels containing salt water in order to produce fresh water. He also reports on his own experimental work with solar energy to distill alcohol and about a metal mirror having a linear focus with a boiler located along the focal line (Mouchot, 1869, 1879).
Fig. 3. The Della Porta solar distillation apparatus, as presented in his book Magiae Naturalis (Nebbia and NebbiaMenozzi, 1966).

4. The development of solar desalination during the Renaissance period Later on during the Renaissance, Giovani Batista Della Porta (15351615), one of the most important scientists of his time wrote many books which were translated into French, Italian and German. In the rst edition of his book Magiae Naturalis which appeared in 1558 he mentions three desalination systems (Della Porta, 1558, 1570, 1631, 1612). In 1589 he issued the second edition comprising 20 volumes. In the volume on distillation he mentions seven methods of desalination, but the most important reference is in the 19th volume where he describes a solar distillation apparatus that converted brackish water into fresh water (Della Porta, 1589, 1957, 1958). Fig. 3 shows the Della Porta solar distillation unit (Nebbia and Nebbia-Menozzi, 1966). He also describes, in the second chapter of volume 20, a method to obtain fresh water from the air (nowadays called the humidicationdehumidication method). From the time of Della Porta until the 19th century, there are no important applications of solar distillation. In 1870 the rst American patent on solar distillation

was granted to Wheeler and Evans. The patent, based on experimental work, was very detailed. Almost everything known to us about the basic operation of the solar stills and the corresponding corrosion problems was described in that patent. The report started as follows: This invention is based upon well known physical laws. The inventors described the greenhouse eect, analyzed in detail the cover condensation and re-evaporation, discussed the dark surface absorption and the possibility of corrosion problems. High operating temperatures were claimed as well as means of rotating the still in order to follow the solar incident radiation (Wheeler and Evans, 1870). Two years later, in 1872, an engineer from Sweden, Carlos Wilson, designed and built the rst large solar

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Fig. 4. The world-wide rst solar distillation plant at Las Salinas, Chile (Telkes, 1956b).

1946), as practical individual small plastic solar distillation apparatuses were developed to be adaptable to lifeboats or rafts. These were used extensively by the US Navy during the War (Telkes, 1945). They were designed to oat on seawater when inated, saving many lives. Telkes continued to investigate various congurations of solar stills, glass covered and multiple-eect solar stills (Telkes, 1951, 1953, 1956a). The explosion of urban population and the tremendous expansion of industry after World War II, brought again the problem of good quality water into focus. In the US, the growing water problem of the 1940s initiated a number of legislative bills by the US Congress to address water issues. President Truman took note of the problem in 1950. In his budget message he noticed (OSW, 1961): Experience in recent years has been that it is not possible to meet the shortage of water, which is a threat in some areas, through our extensive water resources programs. I recommended, therefore, that the Congress enact legislation authorizing the initiation of research to nd the means for transferring salt water into fresh water in large volumes at economical costs. In July 1952 the US Secretary of the Interior established the Oce of Saline Water (OSW) the task of which was to nance basic research on desalination. OSW promoted desalination application through research, by the publication of R&D progress reports and the construction of ve demonstration plants. Among them was a solar distillation in Daytona Beach, Florida (Fig. 5) where many types and congurations of solar stills (American and foreign), were tested (Talbert et al., 1970). Loef, as a consultant to the OSW, experimented with stills, such as basin-type stills, solar evaporation with external condensers and multiple-eect stills, at the

distillation plant, in Las Salinas, Chile (Harding, 1883). The plant was constructed to provide fresh water to the workers and their families of a saltpeter mine and a nearby silver mine. They used the saltpeter mine euents, of very high salinity (140 g/kg or 140,000 ppm), as feed water to the stills. The plant was constructed of wood and timber framework covered with one sheet of glass. It consisted of 64 bays having a total surface area of 4450 m2 and a total land surface area of 7896 m2 . It produced 22.70 m3 of fresh water per day (Fig. 4). The plant was in operation for about 40 years until the mines were exhausted.

5. The achievements of the 20th century Until the Second World War there existed only a few references about new solar distillation plants such as Abbots work in developing a solar distillation device, similar to that of Mouchot (Abbot, 1930, 1938). At the same time some research on solar distillation was undertaken in the USSR (Tromov, 1930; Tekutchev, 1938). Meanwhile during the years 19301940 the dryness in California awakened a new interest in desalination of saline water in general. Some projects were started, but the depressed economy at that time did not permit any research or applications. Interest grew stronger during World War II, when hundreds of soldiers of the allied troops suered from lack of drinking water while stationed in North Africa, the Pacic Ocean Islands and other isolated places. A team at MIT led by Maria Telkes had already begun experiments with solar stills (Telkes, 1943). At the same time the US National Research Defense Committee (NRDC), sponsored solar research to develop solar desalters for military needs at sea. Many patents were granted (Delano, 1946a,b; Delano and Meisner,

Fig. 5. The OSW solar distillation Station at Deytone Beach, Florida (photograph E. Delyannis).

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OSW experimental station in Daytona Beach (1954, 1955). Loef also developed a glass-covered basin-type solar still design with interconnected bays (Loef, 1957, 1958; US Bureau of Reclamation, 1957). In the following years many small capacity solar distillation plants were erected in some Caribbean Islands by McGill University in Canada. Howe was another pioneer in solar stills. He and his collaborators, at the Sea Water Conversion Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, carried out many studies on solar distillation (UC/Davis, 19701985). Experimental work on solar distillation was also performed at the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, India and in the Central Salt and Marine Chemical Research Institute, Bhavnagar, India. The Battelle Memorial Institute, at Columbus, OH, reported on all solar stills and solar distillation plants experimented or/and built up to 1970 (Talbert et al., 1970). In Australia, the Commonwealth Scientic and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Melbourne, carried out a number of studies on solar distillation. In 1963, they developed a prototype bay type still, glass covered and lined with black polyethylene sheet (CSIRO, 1960). Using this prototype still, they constructed solar distillation plants in the Australian desert providing fresh water from saline well water for people and livestock. The larger of these solar distillation plants (Fig. 6) was installed in Coober Pedy (Wilson, 1957; Cooper, 1969). At the same time Baum in USSR was experimenting with solar stills (Baum, 1960, 1961, 1966). Other organizations in the USSR which carried out experiments with solar stills include the Solar Energy Laboratory at Krzhizhanovsky Power Institute in Moscow, the Physics and Engineering Institute and Academy of Sciences in the Turkmenian SSR (Baum and Bairamov, 1964). In Ashkabad, Turkmenia a solar distillation plant was built to provide fresh water to the caracule sheep. The plant

was fed with salt water from wells. An experimental PV generator provided 300400 W for pumping the brackish water to the stills. On March 17, 1954, the Association for Applied Solar Energy (AASE) was formed in Phoenix, Arizona. It was later renamed the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) to accelerate the utilization of the suns energy. About a year later AASE in collaboration with the University of Arizona and the Stanford Research Institute, organized the First World Symposium on Applied Solar Energy which took place in November 1955. In one of the papers Telkes described the Las Salinas solar distillation plant, and reported that it was in operation for about 36 continuous years (Telkes, 1956b). Two articles were dedicated to the history and evolution of solar energy machines (Jordan, Robinson, 1956). In January 1957 the AASE printed the rst issue of The Journal of Solar Energy Science and Engineering, the ancestor of the Solar Energy Journal. The rst article was written by Abbot, on Weather and Solar Variations. Between the years 1965 and 1970 solar distillation plants were constructed on four Greek Islands to provide small communities with fresh water (Delyannis, 1967, 1968, 1983, 1987). The design of the stills was done at the Technical University of Athens (Fig. 7). They used seawater as feed and were covered with single glass. Their capacity ranged from 2044 to 8640 m3 /day. The installation in the island of Patmos was the largest solar distillation plant ever built. These solar stills were of the asymmetric glass covered greenhouse-type with aluminum frames. In three more Greek Islands the Church World Service of New York erected three solar distillation plants These plastic covered stills (tedlar) with capacities of 2886, 388 and 377 m3 /day met the summer fresh water needs of the Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA). Edlin designed the stills which were tested by the OSW in Daytona Beach, FL. The rst plant was an inated, plastic cover design, while the

Fig. 6. The Coober-Pedy (Australia) distillation plant (photograph A. Delyannis).

Fig. 7. The island of Symi (Greece) solar distillation plant.

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other two were plastic V-shape conguration (Eckstrom, 1965). Solar distillation plants were also constructed on the Island of Porto Santo, Madeira, Portugal and in India for which no detailed information exists. Today most of these plants are not operational. A lot of research is being carried out on solar stills but no large capacity solar distillation plants have been constructed in recent years. On the other hand, considerable activity has started in the area of renewable energy coupled to small capacity conventional desalination units to provide small communities with fresh water, especially during the summer. These are mainly connected to reverse osmosis desalination plants of capacities over 1.0 m3 d1 . The majority of these pilot-size plants are for experimental purposes.

6. Renewable energy as energy source for desalination Renewable energy is the alternative solution to the decreasing reserves of fossil fuels. Total worldwide renewable energy desalination installations amount to capacities less than 1% of that of conventional fossil fuel desalination plants. This is due mainly to the high capital and maintenance costs required by renewable energy, making these desalination plants noncompetitive with conventional fuel desalination plants. Fig. 8 shows the estimation by World Energy Council (WEC, 1994) of the increasing general general use of renewable energies. 6.1. The utilization of the suns energy Solar energy is the oldest energy source ever used. The Sun was adored, in many ancient civilizations, as powerful God, as it is shown in Fig. 9, where Pharaoh Akhnaton adores the Sun. The rst known practical applications were in drying for preserving food. The oldest installation for drying of food with solar radiation was found in South France and is dated at 8000 BC. The oldest large-scale application known to us is the burning of the Roman eet in the bay of Syracuse, by

Fig. 9. King Akhnaton adoring the Sun. 18th Dynasty. Cairo, the Egyptian Museum.

Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and philosopher (287212 BC), who used at mirrors to focus the suns rays to a common point on the ship. Scientists discussed this event for centuries. From 100 BC to 1100 AD authors made reference to this event although later it was criticized as a myth because no technology existed at that time to manufacture mirrors (Delyannis, 1967). Nevertheless Archimedes is the author of a book called Mirrors, which is only known from references about its existence. Proclus repeated Archimedes experiment during the Byzantine period. He burned the war eet of enemies besieging Byzance in Constantinople, (Delyannis, 1967). In his book, Optics Vitelio, a Polish mathematician, describes the burning of the Roman eet with detail (Delyannis, 1967; Delyannis and Belessiotis, 1996, 2000; Delyannis and El-Nashar, 1998): The burning glass of Archimedes composed of 24 mirrors, which conveyed the rays of the sun into a common focus and produced an extra degree of heat.

Fig. 8. The World Energy Council (WEC) estimation of renewable energies utilization increase up to year 2020.

Although this was a military experiment, it proved that solar radiation could be a powerful source of en-

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ergy. Many centuries later, scientists again started to experiment with solar radiation trying to convert it into a usable form for direct utilization. In the beginning this happened in Europe when machines were starting to replace horses just before the industrial revolution. Solar energy utilization resumed during the 18th century rst by the French naturalist Boufon (17471748), who experimented with various devices called by him hot mirrors burning at long distance. One of the rst large-scale applications was the solar furnace built by the well-known French chemist Lavoisier (1772, 1782), who at about 1774 constructed powerful lenses to concentrate solar radiation (Fig. 10). These two scientists greatly promoted research and application of solar energy. Between 1866 and 1878 the French engineer Mouchot, constructed and tested various concentrated collectors in Europe and North Africa. Fig. 11 shows Mouchots concentrating collector presented at the 1878 International Exhibition in Paris. The energy gained was used to produce steam to drive a printing machine, which was printing (in French) a Solar Energy Journal (Mouchot, 1878, 1880). The eorts were continued in the USA where John Ericsson, an American engineer developed the rst steam engine driven directly by solar energy. Ericsson built eight systems having parabolic troughs by using either water or air as the working medium (Jordan and Ibele, 1956). In the beginning of the 20th century, the dramatic increase in energy consumption by industry, ignited interest in the possibility of harvesting solar energy for extended practical applications. In 1901, Eneas constructed a large solar concentrator in Pasadena, CA. It was a truncated cone having a solar collection area of 642 sq. ft. (59.64 m2 ) and used water as the working medium. Two more were built in Mesa, CA and one in Wilcox, AZ (Jordan and Ibele, 1956).

In 1901 a team of engineers constructed a truncated cone concentrator similar to that of Eneas. It was also installed in Pasadena, California and was known as the Ostrich Farm Pasadena Sun Power Plant (Jordan and Ibele, 1956). The inner side of the concentrator was lined with 1788 plane mirrors operated clockwise to re-adjust the focus every 20 min. It produced steam to run a 10 HP (7457 kW) steam engine. In 1910 Harrington erected the rst solar storage device of 19 m3 capacity. A solar driven pump was used to pump the water to a storage tank, which was 6.0 m higher. Schuman, an American engineer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, built the rst at concentrator. Later in 1913, Harrington collaborated with Boys to install the biggest solar power plant ever built in Meadi, (south of Cairo), Egypt. The plant provided irrigation water from the river Nile (Jordan and Ibele, 1956). The next large solar plant would not be built for another 63 years.

Fig. 11. The A. Muchot solar concentrator at the International Paris Exhibition in 1878.

Fig. 10. The Lavoisiers solar furnace with the hot mirrors burning at long distance.

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One of the rst large scale experimental solar power plants was constructed by Francia, of the University of Genoa, Italy (Delyannis, personal report). The plant was installed at San Illario-Nervi, near Genoa. The concentrators were cyclic faced mirrors reecting solar radiation onto a central boiler, to produce steam. The plant consisted of 270 heliostats of 1.0 m diameter each and the output was 50 kW. Based exactly on the same design as that of Francia, a pilot solar plant was installed in September 1977 at the engineering experiment station of the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia USA. This station was an advanced components test facility for the US Department of Energy (US DOE). The collector consisted of an octagonally shaped mirror eld containing 550 surface glass mirrors, each of 43.7 in. (111 cm) diameter. The eld focused the sunlight into a focal zone of 70.3 ft. (21.4 m) over the center of the eld. The total power into the focal zone was approximately 400 kW. The focal temperature was 1900 C (3450 F) and the boiler had a maximum output of 130 kW. Fig. 12 shows the Georgia Institute of Technology experimental plant as it existed in 1978, when the Silver Jubilee of ISES took place in Atlanta. Today there exist many large solar plants with output in the range of MW, instead of kW, for producing electricity or process heat. The rst commercial solar plant was installed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, in 1979, 63 years after the Meadi installation by Boy and Schumann. It consisted of 220 heliostats and had an output of 5 MW. The second was erected at Barstow, California, USA, with a total thermal output of 35 MW. Most of the solar plants produce electricity and/or process water for industrial use and they provide superheated steam of 673 K. Thus, they can provide electricity and/or steam to drive small capacity conventional desalination plants driven by thermal or electrical energy. Fig. 13 shows a solar driven desalination multi-eect plant operated by solar thermal energy collected by vacuum tube collectors. The plant was installed in AbuDhabi, by the Abu-Dhabi Water and Electricity Department, United Arab Emerits (El-Nashar, 1985, 1995).

Fig. 13. The Abu-Dhabi solar MED plant, producing about 120 m3 d1 fresh water. It was erected in 1984 and is still in operation.

Some solar desalination plants coupled with conventional desalination plants were installed in various locations in the Middle East. The majority of these plants are experimental or demonstration scale. This is due mainly to the high capital and maintenance costs of these plants. 6.2. The utilization of wind energy After solar energy, wind energy is the most widely used energy source for small capacity desalination plants, mainly of the reverse osmosis type. There exist many wind farms producing electricity and some are connected to desalination plants. Wind energy is, in fact, an indirect activity of the sun. Its use as energy goes as far back as 4000 years, during the dawn of historical times. It was adored, like the sun, as God. For the Greeks, wind was the god Aeolos, the ying man. After this gods name, wind energy is sometimes referred to as Aeolian energy. He was accompanied by eight god-winds which dened the various wind directions. The Athenians dedicated a clock tower to them, which still exists today in Athens. In Homers Odyssey (book X 2248), it states: Then to the Aeolian isle we came, where dwelt Aeolos, the son of Hippotas, dear to the Gods . . . for the Gods . . . for the son of Cronos had made him keeper of the winds. In the beginning, about 4000 ago, wind energy was used for the propulsion of sailing ships. In antiquity this was the only energy to drive ships sailing in the Mediterranean Basin and other seas, and even today it is used for sailing small leisure boats. At about the same period windmills appeared which were used mainly to grind various crops.

Fig. 12. The Georgia Tech. Experimental solar power plant.

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It is believed that the genesis of windmills, though not proved, originated from the prayer mills of Tibet. The rst, very primitive windmills have been found at Neh, eastern Iran and on the Afghanistan borders (Major, 1990). Many windmills have been found in Persia, India, Sumatra and Bactria. It is believed in general that many of the windmills were constructed by the Greeks, who immigrated to Asia with the troops of Alexander the Great (Heron, 80 AD). The earliest written document known to us about windmills is in a Hindu book of about 400 BC, called Arthasastra of Kantilys (Soerensen, 1995), where it suggested the use of windmills to pump water. In Western Europe windmills came later, during the 12th century, with the rst written reference in the 10401180 AD time frame (Merriam, 1980). The famous Swiss mathematician, Euleur, developed the wind wheel theory and related equations, which are, even today, the most important principles for turbogenerators. The ancestor of todays vertical axis wind turbines were developed by Darious (1931), but it took about 50 years to be commercialized in the 1970s. Denmark rst installed wind turbines during World War II to increase the electrical capacity of their grid. They installed 200 kW Gedser mill turbines, which were in operation until the 1960s (Dodge and Thresler, 1989). They had a capacity of 300500 kW. These types of wind turbines were replaced by the new generation of aero generators which are more exible and cheaper than the older ones. Todays modern wind generators range from 500 kW up to 1.0 MW. Wind farms or individual wind generators are used today to produce electricity for reverse osmosis desalination units in order to provide fresh water to small communities in isolated and remote locations having sucient wind energy sites.

7. Conclusions Historic developments help new generations to understand the continuity of technological achievements and to adopt and apply old ideas to new existing methodologies. History is not an event that goes back only to very ancient times. Taking into consideration the very rapid rate of new developments, what is for our generation a new sophisticated development and application, is for a new generation already an historical event.

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