The relationship between the progress made by civilizations and the human use of available energy sources has been increasingly scrutinized by scholarship, and some studies go back as far as antiquity.Footnote 1 Scholarly researchers are also engaging with depictions of the progress made during the past centuries regarding the development of technologies that used available energy sources.Footnote 2 Recent studies that examine the relationship between energy use and social progress between the nineteenth century and the present have highlighted the role played by pioneering actors who pursued sustainable agendas in renewable energy and organic food, among other sectors. This literature is heavily focused on the developed world.Footnote 3 The same bias is evident in studies of contemporary sustainable business.Footnote 4
The term “green entrepreneurship” has been used by Geoffrey Jones and others to label such pioneers.Footnote 5 The term has similarities to the concept of “sustainable entrepreneurship,” used for contemporary forms of environmentally friendly entrepreneurship.Footnote 6 Both terms refer to businesses that engage in for-profit ventures designed to enhance rather than degrade sustainability. Contemporary studies of green entrepreneurship are heavily focused on developed countries.Footnote 7 Jones's historical study, too, is heavily focused on Germany and the United States, at least before World War II. Regarding the postwar decades, he does identify cases in Japan, Egypt, and a number of other countries, including Brazil and Costa Rica, from the 1980s.Footnote 8
This research note seeks to trace the history of green entrepreneurship in developing countries, particularly Latin America, to before World War I. Its focus is on entrepreneurial endeavors in Chile in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including several cases of novel industrial technologies that sought patent protection for the use of renewable energy sources. The patent applications filed between 1877 and 1910 in the Chilean patent office form the basis of the study. It is already known that there was considerable interest in both solar energy and sea wave energy in the nineteenth century, but all from inventors in the developed West.Footnote 9
This research note begins with the first industrial development of solar distillation at a nitrate plant in the Atacama Desert named Las Salinas in the 1870s.Footnote 10 It goes on to examine two other distillation plants, established in the Sierra Gorda and Domeyko nitrate production facilities.Footnote 11 The inventor of this technology was Charles Wilson, a European engineer immigrant who settled in Chile and obtained a local patent in 1877.Footnote 12 This note explores whether Wilson's endeavor was a singular occurrence or, rather, if he was a harbinger of a larger entrepreneurial trend occurring in Chile at the time.
This level of innovation might be considered surprising, since Chile's economy was still primarily focused on commodity exports, especially nitrates, minerals, and agricultural products.Footnote 13 However, as several recent studies have documented, Chile was an early adopter of the patent system—its first patent law was passed in 1840.Footnote 14 The system was open to most inventions, and patent fees were relatively cheap.Footnote 15 Chile was a small patent jurisdiction representing less than 0.07 percent of worldwide patent grants between 1830 and 1914.Footnote 16 However, it is known that some of this patenting was significant, including the cases of the female inventor Laurencia Collangues de Solminihac and Edison's electricity patents.Footnote 17
The note is organized as follows: section 2 looks briefly at the role of patents in innovation; section 3 discusses the patent database used in this study; section 4 presents the evidence of Chilean patent data; and section 5 concludes.
Patents and Knowledge Creation in Chile
Debate about the costs and benefits of patent systems, particularly for developing economies, began in the late eighteenth century and continued through the nineteenth century.Footnote 18 Despite these historic disagreements, patent systems are usually regarded by contemporary economists as a healthy public policy that promotes economic and technical progress, although there are many dissenters.Footnote 19 The value, or otherwise, of using patent statistics as an index for innovation activity is also much debated. Petra Moser has recently argued that patent statistics are an imperfect way to capture innovation because they tend to discourage applications, for several reasons.Footnote 20 However, the fact that Chile had an early patent system—relatively cheap, regardless of the origin of the application; open to most technologies; and with publication requirements that did not disclose technical aspects of the subject matter—suggests that Chilean patent law was less likely than other patent systems to discourage innovators from using the system. Therefore, patent information seems like a useful guide to the innovation dynamics taking place in Chile.
While there is evidence that the Southern Hemisphere was a source of knowledge creation, the history of technological innovation in the region is not well known.Footnote 21 Nevertheless, it is clear that technological development in Europe and in European colonies and ex-colonies in Asia and Africa was a more interactive, culturally nuanced, multisited process than traditionally acknowledged.Footnote 22 European scientists traveled to and wrote about Chile during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, noting particularly technologies for spinning, dyeing, and weaving cloth and for extracting gold from ore.Footnote 23 American scientists reported on the abundant solar radiation in the central and northern regions of Chile and its use in the manufacture of charqui and raisins.Footnote 24
The Patent Data
In order to examine the evolution and use of the Chilean patent system for registering renewable energy inventions, we relied on patent application data rather than patent grants published by Montero.Footnote 25 We chose to do so because the set of patent grants is too reduced, in that it excludes data related to unsuccessful applications. The data about applications that were not granted patents provides valuable information about the types of technologies that were being pursued and the kinds of protections inventors sought for themselves and their families within the economy. We built a database using the information concerning patent applications published in the Official Gazette between March 1877 and December 1910.Footnote 26 We found the relevant information by carrying out searches of the words “privilejio,” “invento,” and “invencion” in the search engine of the Official Gazette. Once the name of the applicant and key words of the invention were identified, we organized the information such that each entry in the database would mimic and contain what is normally part of a patent application file.Footnote 27 We completed the gaps for missing data with additional ad hoc searches for each entry in the database corresponding to patent applications.
The technologies of interest for this research were identified through the terms most commonly used for different categories of energy sources. Thus, we later identified the patent application descriptions, through their contents, using terms such as “viento,” for wind power; “mar” and “olas,” for wave and tidal power, which were also aggregated with the fewer cases that used run-of-river as the energy source; and “solar” and “salobre,” for solar energy.Footnote 28 Identifying applications required distinguishing and excluding the applications that had nothing to do with the use of renewable energy sources or were likely to confound the patent applications dealing with the use of such energy sources with steam and combustion power, which were the dominant energy sources at the time.Footnote 29
In several cases, the communications from applicants published in the Official Gazette included information about their national origin and place of residence. This information allows for the identification of immigrants, a feature of patent applicants that is not available in Montero's list.
Evidence from the Chilean Patent System
Table 1 summarizes the patent application data collected for the period. A total of 3,650 applications were collected for the period from 1877 to 1910, as compared to over 2,000 patents granted between 1840 and 1910.Footnote 30 Overall, eighty patent applications (2 percent) were related to renewable energy and the evidence shows that the large majority of renewable energy applications originated in Chile (74 percent), and the rest in foreign countries.
Table 1 Patent Applications for Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in Chile by Residents and Nonresidents
Source: Authors’ calculations based on data retrieved from the Official Gazette between Mar. 1877 and 31 Dec. 1910.
Taking the 1880s as a basis, renewable energy applications tripled by the end of the decade, regardless of their origin. However, relative to other technologies, renewable energy applications originating in Chile grew more dynamically. The opposite occurred with foreign applications: renewable energy applications grew more slowly than other types of patent applications.
An estimated 8 percent of domestic patent applications were filed by immigrants who had settled in Chile. In general, the evidence suggests that Chile had a dynamic economy that required the protection of new technological developments using renewable energy, both Chilean and foreign. Innovation originating in other countries was becoming increasingly more frequent, but indigenous innovations maintained a leading position, with most patent applications being submitted by non-migrants (92 percent of resident applications). Moreover, the table reveals that the proportion of immigrant applicants declined during the period, from 18 to 4 percent in the final decade. These features reveal a limited role played by innovators from developed countries in the knowledge creation reflected in patent activity in Chile.
Table 2 shows the distribution of renewable energy patent applications, revealing that the majority of applications concerned water energies—wave, tidal, water flow, and currents (72 percent of all renewable energy applications)—and that this percentage was slightly higher among applications originating in Chile than from nonresidents (74 compared to 65 percent of renewable energy applications, respectively). Solar technologies followed at 19 percent, and wind energy represented the remaining 9 percent. Only 17 percent of applications related to wind energy originated in Chile, which made wind technologies the least-frequent domestic source of energy.
Table 2 Renewable Energy Source (RES) of Patent Applications by Residents and Nonresidents
Source: Authors’ calculations based on data retrieved from the Official Gazette between Mar. 1877 and 31 Dec. 1910.
(1) RES applications that qualify in two categories (solar & waves) are subtracted in equal parts from each category to compute percentages.
It is difficult to benchmark these figures, as we have found no comparable evidence for other countries. Nonetheless, technologies related to renewable energy account for 2 percent of all patent applications in Chile during the period, a small though not negligible figure. Eighty technologies applied for protection in thirty-three years, sixty of them originating in Chile, which is an average of 1.8 applications per year, equivalent to an average of one renewable patent application per million inhabitants per year.
Table 3 presents the number of applicants applying for renewable-energy patents according to their origin. Applicants may have participated in the application process several times during the study period, acting in different roles (namely, applicant, examiner, agent, or opponent of an application). We tried to identify them by name and to determine the first year in which they appear as actors in the database, regardless of the role they played at the time. Since an application may have more than one applicant, and an applicant may apply for more than one patent, figures for applicants may differ from the actual number of applications. The table shows that the eighty renewable energy source applications (RES) involved ninety-two individuals (applicants, opponents, or examiners). Most of these actors (seventy-three, or 80 percent) were residents, and sixty-three were patent applicants. Compared to nonresidents, resident actors were less specialized in renewable energy technologies: RES technologies represented approximately 42 percent of the applications filed by resident actors during the period. By contrast, renewable energy applications represented 65 percent of applications by nonresidents. These figures indicate that these individuals, particularly the residents, were active innovators engaged in technological development, in both sustainable energies and other technologies. Twenty-eight resident applicants applied for more than one patent each, and renewable energy applications tend to correspond to their first incursion into the patent system. Thirty-five other applicants applied for only one patent, which was a renewable energy application.
Table 3 Patent Applications by Residence Status of Applicants
Source: Authors’ calculations based on data collected from the Official Gazette. Note that the table overrepresents the aggregates because of those applicants who applied for the same patent. Such cases would be counted as many times as the applicants had applied for the patents.
Table 4 summarizes the data of the twenty-eight resident applicants participating most actively in the patent system. The ones selected corresponded to those who had the largest number of RES applications and filed one other patent application and/or played at least one other role in the patent application system (as opponent, examiner, or agent of other patent applicants). We searched for available information for these individuals and found that at least two of them had obtained a U.S. patent for a similar or related RES technology after having first applied for a patent in Chile, and one obtained a patent in the United Kingdom after he had obtained a patent in Chile. We also found that six applicants had made publications and that all of them, except for Liborio Brieba (a prolific author of the time), published after they had first applied for a patent in Chile. It is also noteworthy that eleven of these applicants had been active opponents of third-party patent applications and four had also been examiners of patent applications.
Table 4 Characterization of a Sample of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) Patent Applicants
Source: Selection made by the authors of RES applicants with the largest number of interventions in patent applications throughout the period.
The preliminary evidence regarding these individuals suggests that they were active businesspeople engaged in the public life of their time. Many were founding investors in new firms, some related to energy production and distribution. The exemplary case of Juan Tonkin Thomas is revealing. He obtained a patent to produce energy using water in 1897, as well as several other patents later on. He sold the first patent to a foreign firm and later invested in pioneering companies that developed hydroelectricity (Compañía Nacional de Fuerza Eléctrica) and urban electricity distribution (Compañía Chilena de Electricidad). He was more than an investor and inventor. He was also an active patent activist, vigorously opposing potentially competitive technologies seeking patent protection. He sat on the boards of these large energy companies until the 1930s.
The case of Victor Vargas Gamallo is also interesting. Even though less evidence exists of his investment and corporate activities in Chile, he is known to have exported his technology abroad. He owned a patent for the use of solar energy in the production of honey and later obtained other related patents. In addition to obtaining a patent in the United States thereafter, he published content regarding his invention in Chile and later in Cuba.Footnote 31 His invention was reported by others in Central America through Spanish diplomatic reports to the mainland.Footnote 32
These individuals had diverse origins. We found evidence of patent holders who had immigrated to Chile at some point before they made their applications and continued living in Chile thereafter, such as Charles Wilson, the European national who established Las Salinas.Footnote 33 Other immigrants included Dr. Erik Knut Erwall, a radiologist/physician who emigrated from Sweden; Eugenio Lahaye, a Belgian engineer who became a prominent professional in the mining sector; Teofilo Reszca, a German engineer who filed many patent applications; and Charles Plisson, a French engineer who had previously published in a scientific journal in Chile. The case of Ana Augusta Weihers is also remarkable. While we found no evidence about her origin, her surname suggests that she might have migrated from Europe or been born to a migrant family (as was Juan Tonkin Thomas). She was one of the few women filing patent applications at the time and the only one seeking protection for the use of RES. She was a multiple patent applicant; unfortunately, and unlike many of the other individuals on the list, not one of her patent applications was granted.
Yet, as previously mentioned, many applicants were Chilean born, like Domingo Urzúa Cruzat, Liborio Brieba, Eulogio Allendes, and Eusebio Naranjo, among others. Most of them were members of the elite, intellectuals (such as Brieba and Urzúa Cruzat), and patent examiners (like Allendes, son of a politician and well-known university professor).
The above evidence suggests a multidirectional trend in the flow of knowledge and technology. Patents were filed by individuals who migrated from the northern hemisphere and stayed in Chile (e.g., Knut Erwall, Lahaye, Reszca); they originated in the Southern Hemisphere and flowed or travelled northward (Vargas Gamallo, Urzúa Cruzat, Tonkin Thomas; they emerged in Chile and stayed within its borders, with some formal dissemination (Brieba). There were also cases with little evidence of use or dissemination of technology at that stage (e.g., Naranjo). These individuals are not easily characterized as similes of the “green entrepreneurs” depicted elsewhere.Footnote 34 They appear to have been engaged as businesspeople and technicians; many of them originated in Chile; so far there is no evidence of them being naturalists as early green entrepreneurs; and in some cases they migrated in person to export and expand their business.
Conclusion
This research note has examined patent-applicant data from a new database tracing evidence of interest in developing technologies using renewable energy in Chile between 1877 and 1910.
Starting in the 1870s, with the almost forgotten case of the solar distillation initiative at the Las Salinas nitrate plant in the North of Chile, we found significant evidence of technological development in Chile, engaging in different uses of a variety of renewable energies beyond solar, including wave, hydro, tidal, and wind power. We found eighty patent applications filed in this period and over ninety individuals engaged in the application process, mostly as applicants. Three-quarters of these actors were Chilean nationals, and their patent applications were primarily related to water energy sources. Some patent applicants living in Chile had immigrated from Europe. The preliminary analysis reveals that many patent applicants became authors of written works relating to their inventions in Chile and abroad after they filed the first patent application. Several individuals were investors and founders of companies, mostly after they applied for the corresponding patents. The three inventors who also obtained patents abroad were active businesspeople who developed an industry either in Chile or abroad.
The evidence examined in this research note suggests that the creation of renewable energy technology in Chile originated largely in Chile and was part of a business-led endeavor. While some of the actors involved in technological development had previously migrated from Europe, European participation decreased over time. There are examples of Chilean nationals successfully developing renewable energy technologies and exporting them to other nations. However, there are some cases in which we could not determine whether they were successfully implemented in the marketplace. In sum, we found mixed evidence regarding the origin and direction of the flows of knowledge. Mostly, knowledge originated in Chile, with inputs from migrants and Chilean nationals alike. We found evidence of the exportation of knowledge to the United States and Britain through foreign patents, as well as to other developing countries such as Guatemala and Cuba.
The evidence examined in this note suggests that Chile was in the process of developing new, novel, and “green” technologies much earlier than the 1960s. The evidence examined here suggests that Chile was forging a new and early path of sustainable economic development by using clean energy sources within a framework of an open global economy, thus exploiting their comparative advantages. However, this trajectory may have been halted by subsequent global developments, notably World War I, and the subsequent collapse of the nitrate industry and the economic crisis of 1929.
