"Cookery by Sunlight"
To the Editor of the Times

Sir - Your leading article on this subject in to-day's issue reminds me that in 1913 I was the guest of friends in Pasadena, California, whose house was fitted with an apparatus for heating water by sunlight.
The installation was in the roof, and the sun's rays were directed onto it through a plate-glass skylight. It produced hot water in large quantity, and was, in fact, the normal source of
their supply for all household purposes.
Yours faithfully,
Lawrence Beesley
10 Nottingham Place, W.1, Jan 26.

(The Times, January 26, 1922, p.6)

The relevant leading article of two days earlier began -

Cookery by Sunlight

"Last August we commented on a new use of solar energy at the astronomical station of the Smithsonian Institution on Mount Wilson in California. Dr C. G. Abbott had devised a solar "cooker" by which, using only the sun's rays, he was
able to cook meat, vegetables, fruit and bread for his party.
Particulars of the ingenious apparatus, published in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, confirm our guess that its main feature is the concentration of the rays by a mirror..."