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"What has allowed so many Psychopathic Personalities to rise so high in corporations and government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Energy Converter  
  Massive unit on the sunside of Mercury converts heat into energy, and beams it around the solar system.  

"Cheap energy; cheapest in the System. Sun power, you know, and on Mercury's Sunside, sunpower is something. That's why the Station was built in the sunlight rather than in the shadow of a mountain. It's really a huge energy converter. The heat is turned into electricity, light mechanical work and what have you; so that energy is supplied and the Station is cooled in a simultaneous process."
Technovelgy from Runaround, by Isaac Asimov.
Published by Street and Smith in 1942
Additional resources -

The energy is beamed around the solar system; this is described more fully in succeeding stories the I, Robot series.

Compare to the Near-Space Solar Energy Collectors from Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker. and the solar energy beam from Masquerade by Clifford Simak.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Runaround
  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
  Tech news articles related to Runaround
  Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov

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