يحاول ذهب - حر
Burned
June 2023
|The Atlantic
How a small-town auto mechanic peddling a solar-energy breakthrough swindled Wall Street investors, Warren Buffett, and the U.S. Treasury out of $1 billion
Jeff Carpoff was a good mechanic. But as a businessman, he struggled. In the two decades since high school, he’d lost one repair shop after another, filed for personal bankruptcy, and watched a lender foreclose on the small house in a California refinery town where he’d lived with his wife and two young kids. By 2007, he was 36, jobless, and adrift.
Yet there, at his life’s lowest, the remarkable happened. A contraption he’d rigged up in his driveway—a car trailer decked with solar panels and a heavy battery— got the attention of people with real money. Carpoff could scarcely have imagined it. He’d never gone to college and had no experience in green technology. His invention, he thought, was “crazy, harebrained.” But investors saw the makings of a clean-energy revolution.
For decades, there was basically one way to rush power to places without electricity: the portable diesel generator. It kept equipment running and lights on at construction sites, outdoor events, movie sets, disaster zones. But diesel generators ate the ozone layer; warmed the planet; and caused smog, acid rain, and possibly cancer, on top of their noise, smell, and fuel cost.
Carpoff ’s machine—a solar generator on wheels—was a sun-fueled alternative. He called it the Solar Eclipse. The design was so simple that it was a wonder no one seemed to have thought of it before.
هذه القصة من طبعة June 2023 من The Atlantic.
اشترك في Magzter GOLD للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة، وأكثر من 9000 مجلة وصحيفة.
هل أنت مشترك بالفعل؟ تسجيل الدخول
المزيد من القصص من The Atlantic
The Atlantic
Deadlier Than Gettysburg
How the cruelty of the Confederacy's prison camps gave rise to the rules of war
10 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
THE MAN WHO BROKE PHYSICS
One of the pleasures of watching Ilia Malinin, apart from his indifference to gravity, is to witness him becoming.
16 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
How Toni Morrison Saw History
In her novels, she located the missing story of Black America.
12 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
The Madness of Lord Tennyson
The Victorian poet was startlingly modern.
5 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
THE PLOT AGAINST THE HUMANITIES
What is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation doing to higher education?
22 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
Why Do Democrats Hate Winning?
Ken Martin has one of those resting dread faces, as if he's bracing for someone to dump a bucket of rocks on his head.
37 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
ROD DREHER'S DEMONS
HE DERIDES THE ENLIGHTENMENT, SECULARISM, AND THE MODERN WORLD. CONSERVATIVES-INCLUDING THE VICE PRESIDENT-ARE JOINING HIM ON A MARCH BACK TO THE MIDDLE AGES.
20 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
Every Nation for Itself
President Trump wants to return to the 19th century's international order. He will leave America less prosperous—and the whole world less secure.
19 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
The Secrets of Indigenous Art
Major exhibits are upending the way people understand Native American and Aboriginal artists.
14 mins
March 2026
The Atlantic
The Novel as Extended Op-Ed
If anyone could write good fiction about immigration, it would probably be Lionel Shriver. Instead, her latest book goes off the rails.
10 mins
March 2026
Translate
Change font size
