What a brand new computer system looked like in 1977. Image Credit: Tricia Banks via CC.

It's tough, sometimes, to be on the cutting edge. And that's exactly where solar energy is-both the companies that provide it and the consumers who believe in and choose it.

As we work together to create a future of clean, affordable energy, we face critics and naysayers. They might betraditional utilities fearing a loss of their monopoly. They might bepolitically influential billionaires . Or, they might be "neighbors" who justdon't like change . (Though, there's growingevidence that rooftop solar's growth has been influenced quite positively by neighbor-to-neighbor relationships.)

Solar energy is only the latest in a long list of disruptive technologies that fought to win out over early resistance. Here are a few others:

1. Personal Computers- Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, nixed a project to produce what would have been one of the first home computers. In 1977, he stated, " There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." Since the mid 1970s,more than 4 billion personal computers have been sold worldwide, with about a quarter for home use. Digital Equipment Corporation, for its part, was subsequently purchased by Compaq in 1998.

2. Satellite communications- In 1961, at the dawn of the Space Age, then FCC Commissioner T.A.M. Craven stated, "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States." Today, about2,000 communications satellites orbit the earth, relaying signals.

3. Television- Darryl Zanuck, one of the founders of 20th Century Fox movie studios, claimed in 1946 that television would flop. He reasoned people would "get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." Today, an estimated89 percent of households worldwide have a television.

4. The car- Writing in 1925, Princeton University Dean Howard McClenahan warned that Sunday drives encouraged the skipping of church, and would create "devilish and depraved" young people. Today, there are about250 million cars in the United States … and an estimated350,000 churches .

5. The phonograph- Composer John Phillip Sousa feared the phonograph, invented in 1877, would deteriorate American music. The advent of jazz and rock-and-roll in the 20th century seems to have proven "The March King" wrong.

6. The telephone- The Knights of Columbus warned in 1926 that the telephone would ruin home life and end the practice of visiting friends. Don't you call (or text) friends when you're coming over?

7. The printing press- The 15th century German Benedictine Abbot Johannes Trithemius decried the invention of the printing press. He feared it would make monks-now freed from having to painstakingly hand-copy sacred texts-lazy and immoral.

8. Writing- Yes, even writing-something we do every day-was slammed by none other than the Greek philosopher Plato. He feared it would make people forgetful because they wouldn't have to memorize facts.

So, what's the moral of the story?

Maybe it's that, if history is a guide, resistance to solar energy is happening right on cue.

Like the champions of the world-changing technologies that came before us, we're in this fight to win it. Together with the hundreds of thousands of Americans who've gone solar, we're changing the world.

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