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Pioneer

Georges Claude

Electricity & Grid Pioneers

Georges Claude was a French engineer and inventor best known for pioneering neon tube lighting, who also built one of the first working demonstrations of ocean thermal energy conversion, a method of generating power from the temperature difference between warm surface seawater and cold deep water. In 1930, working off the coast of Cuba at Matanzas Bay, Claude built an ocean thermal energy conversion plant that produced a small amount of electricity, proving the concept even though the technology never became commercially practical during his lifetime. Claude had earlier made his fortune from Air Liquide, the industrial gas company he founded to commercialize his method for liquefying air, and from the neon lighting he patented and first publicly displayed in Paris in 1910.

Facts
Birth Year
1870 1
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikidata: Georges Claude
Wikidata Q537061, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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