Charles Fritts

Charles E. Fritts (* 1850, † 1903) was an American inventor in New York City. He is credited for building the first selenium cell ( 1883).

The Photoelectric Effect in Selenium was discovered in 1873 by Willoughby Smith in 1876 by ​​the British physicist William Grylls Adams and his student Richard Evans Day. Fritts built about 1883, the first selenium cell of the semiconductor selenium, which was coated with a thin layer of gold. For the generation of electricity from sunlight on a large scale it was not suitable ( the efficiency was only about 1-2 per cent), but found application, for example as a light meter in photography.

Viable cells emerged only in 1954 in the U.S. (see History of photovoltaics).

Writings

• On a New Form of Selenium Photocell, American Journal of Science 26, 1883, 465