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Auction: SW1014 - Bonds & Share Certificates of the World
Lot: 341

Sun Electric Generator Company. 5 Shares at $10 each. Arizona, 21. October 1909, #77. The President of this company was George Howard Cove (1864*), an inventor born into a Presbyterian family of four children from Amherst, Nova Scotia. Cove began inventing various objects such as a special steam engine, a piano with electric recording and a tidewater power system. In 1903, he invented his solar electric generator and displayed a model in the Metropole Building in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He sent a description of the device to a group of New York investors under the lead of Elmer Ellsworth Burlingame (1862-1928). The group sent an expert to examine the model in Halifax, and financed a laboratory and a production plant for Cove in Somerville, Mass. In 1906, George Cove was granted the US patent (No. 824684) for an application for his “Thermo Electric Battery and Apparatus” that converted heat from a wood stove to electricity and also used an array of this types of devices in solar panels to generate electricity for household use - a market with enormous potential. In 1909, Cove and his investors founded the Arizona based Sun Electric Generator Company with a Capital of $5 Million and started raising capital in order to produce and market Cove’s solar electric generators. They pretended that the large plant of the company in Baltimore was overrun with orders. The company also had demonstrating plants in New Orleans, FL and Austin, TX. Cove also maintained a workshop and laboratory at 118 Maiden Lane, New York. Shares of the company were sold from Burlingame’ office on Wall Street for $5 to $12 each share. In 1911, Chief Post Office Inspector Robert S. Sharp of Washington charged Cove and Burlingame for fraud. He explained that when the generator was examined “it was found that it was connected with a storage battery, the power of which was received not from the sun, but from the regular city companies.” However, until this day, it is still questioned whether or not the invention was a hoax or the apparatus really worked. In both cases, this share is clearly and by far the earliest share of the solar cell industry available. Only certificate we have ever seen. EF.

Sold for
SFr1,200