A glass manufacturer, not idealists, bankrolled the first solar house campaign

Evidence

The first major backer of the solar house was a manufacturer of insulated glass. In the 1920s and 1930s, the architectural modernists of the Bauhaus school had encouraged the use of glass walls, but the modernist buildings often were terribly uncomfortable in the winter: The uninsulated windows allowed too much heat to escape. To overcome the difficulty, a handful of companies sought to perfect windows with a sealed cushion of air between two planes of glass. The new windows also solved a major problem for wouldbe builders of solar homes. During World War II, the leading manufacturer of the new windows – the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company – began to promote solar design. The company provided money for the Illinois Institute of Technology to research the heating performance of a George Keck house outside of Chicago. In 1943 and again in 1945, the company issued booklets about solar houses. Though a few more manufacturers entered the market, Libbey-Owens-Ford continued to lead the way. After the war, the company commissioned a demonstration solar home for every state, and Simon and Schuster published a book about the project in 1947: Your Solar Home. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 232