Wave Power Might Be Feasible After All

It’s a simple idea: take the incessant, rhythmic movement of the ocean’s surface and turn it into a usable form of energy. And why shouldn’t we? It’s clean, renewable, predictable, and there’s a lot of it, as the ocean covers 71% of the planet’s surface.

Even way back in 1799, engineer and mathematician Pierre-Simon Girard realized the potential of wave energy. On the coast of his native France, he and his son invented a simple buoy attached to a lever. The idea was that the buoy would move up and down with the waves, in turn moving the lever, which could be translated into mechanical energy to power the many pumps and mills fueling the First Industrial Revolution. His patent claims “The enormous mass of an ocean liner … responds to the slightest wave motion. If … one imagines this ship suspended from the end of a lever, one will conceive the idea of the most powerful machine which has ever existed.” While its effectiveness was limited, this spurred a flurry of new patents in subsequent decades across a rapidly industrializing Europe, as people began to make use of such a vast, renewable source of energy.