Lancaster County, Nebraska, September 1874. While every homesteader on the prairie was stacking firewood and stuffing rags into wall cracks, Marco Bianke was building something that stopped travelers dead on the road to stare. The 36-year-old Italian immigrant was constructing a 15- ft glass and timber tower in the middle of his property, connected to his cabin by tunnels and pipes.
The sun’s finally cooked his brain, one neighbor told another. Glass won’t survive the first hail stom, and that tower won’t heat a thimble. Nobody understood what Marco knew about air that refuses to sit still. And if you want to find out what happened when the February cold hitus 34° and Marco hadn’t touched his wood pile in 3 days, subscribe to this channel and tell me in the comments where you’re watching from.
Marco Bianke had arrived in Nebraska in the spring of 1871, part of the wave of Italian immigrants seeking land and opportunity in a country that seemed to have endless amounts of both. He’d left behind the Venetto region in northeastern Italy, where his family had worked as glass blowers in Morirano for four generations.
Craftsmen who understood how light and heat moved through transparent materials the way farmers understood soil. In Italy, Marco had spent 20 years in the furnaces, learning to shape molten glass at temperatures that would kill an unprotected man in minutes. But more than shaping, he’d learned to observe. He’d watched how sunlight streaming through factory windows could raise temperatures 30° in enclosed spaces.
He’d seen how the angled glass roofs of drying rooms created currents of rising hot air that pulled cooler air in from below. The glass works were a laboratory of thermal physics, and Marco had been an attentive student. America promised land for those willing to work it. What it delivered on the flat Nebraska prairie was wind, grass, and winters that made Italian cold seem like a pleasant afternoon.
His first January in Lancaster County nearly ended his American dream. The temperature dropped to minus22° and the wind found every gap in the sod house where he’d been renting space. Marco had no experience with this kind of cold. The kind that froze water in buckets 6 ft from a roaring fire that killed cattle standing upright that turned breath to ice before it left a man’s lips.
He watched his neighbors burn through entire wood piles in weeks, cutting and hauling and splitting from dawn to dusk just to keep from freezing at night. The problem, Marco realized, wasn’t the cold itself. The problem was how Americans fought it. Every homesteader on the prairie approached winter the same way.
Burn fuel, generate heat, lose that heat through walls and roof, burn more fuel. It was a war of attrition that humans could never truly win. The cold was infinite. Firewood was not. Men exhausted themselves gathering fuel while their families shivered in cabins that bled warmth into the endless sky. But Marco had seen another way.
In the Morano glass works, nobody heated the drying rooms with fires. They let the sun do the work. Angled glass captured light. Dark surfaces absorbed it. and the natural tendency of hot air to rise created circulation that moved warmth exactly where it was needed. The Venetians had been engineering with sunlight for centuries.
Nebraska had brutal winters, yes, but it also had something the Venito lacked. Relentless sunshine. Even in January, the sun blazed across the prairie with an intensity that made Marco squint. All that solar energy pouring down day after day, and every homesteader ignored it completely. They huddled around their stoves burning wood while free heat streamed past their windows unused.
By 1874, Marco had saved enough to buy 30 acres of flat prairie land east of Lincoln. The property had nothing to recommend it. No trees for timber, no creek for water, no hills for windbreak. Other settlers had passed it over as worthless, but Marco hadn’t bought it for what it had.
He’d bought it for what it received. Unobstructed sunlight from dawn to dusk with the low winter sun angles that would penetrate a south-facing surface most directly. His nearest neighbor, a German farmer named Hinrich Schultz, had watched Marco survey the empty land and shaken his head. “Nothing there but grass and wind,” Schultz had told him.
You’ll freeze or starve. Maybe both. There’s sunlight, Marco had replied. Sunlight won’t heat a cabin. Marco had smiled. It will if you know how to catch it. The argument with his wife, Lucia, began the moment Marco showed her the drawings. He’d sketched the design by candle light over several weeks.
a 15- ft tower built primarily of glass and timber painted black on all interior surfaces connected to their cabin by an underground tunnel at the base and a pipe through the wall near the roof line. Lucia stared at the drawings like he’d proposed building a cathedral on the moon. “A glass tower,” she said flatly.
“On the Nebraska prairie, where hail falls like stones from heaven. The glass will be angled and reinforced and positioned away from the worst storm directions. And what is this tower supposed to do besides shatter in the first storm and make us the fools of the county? Marco tried to explain. The sun would heat the black interior of the tower to over 100° even in winter. Hot air rises.
Everyone knew that. As the heated air climbed and poured into the cabin through the upper pipe, it would pull cooler air from the cabin floor through the underground tunnel and into the base of the tower to be heated again. A continuous loop, a convection engine powered by nothing but sunlight. We’ll have warm air flowing into the cabin all day, he said.
No wood, no fire, just the sun. And at night, when there is no sun, we burn wood at night, but only at night. Half the fuel may be less. Lucia pushed the drawings back across the table. In Italy, your family made beautiful things from glass. Useful things. This is neither beautiful nor useful. This is madness. Word of Marco’s plan reached Heinrich Schultz within days.
The German farmer rode over on the pretense of welcoming his new neighbor and found Marco pacing out the tower’s footprint with stakes and string 30 ft from where the cabin would stand. Bianke, Schultz called out, dismounting heavily. The men in Lincoln are talking about your glass house. It’s not a house. It’s a solar tower.
They’re calling it an Italian oven, saying you plan to cook yourself like a festival pig. Marco continued placing stakes. The air moves through. It doesn’t stay and cook anything. Schultz walked closer, studying the marked dimensions with growing concern. I’ve been farming this prairie for 9 years.
I’ve seen hailstones the size of eggs. I’ve seen winds that flattened barns. Glass out here doesn’t survive a single season. This glass will be thick, angled against the hail, protected by overhangs. And when it breaks, when you’ve spent your savings on a pile of shards, then I’ll rebuild it. Schultz shook his head slowly.
Your wife must be a patient woman. My wife thinks I’ve lost my mind. She’s not wrong. The German mounted his horse. I’ve seen immigrants come with strange ideas before. Most of them leave after the first winter if they survive it. The prairie doesn’t forgive mistakes, Bianke. It buries them. That Sunday at the small Catholic church in Lincoln, Father Morrison pulled Marco aside after mass.
The priest had heard murmurss from the congregation, concern about the Italian family, worried that the husband was spending their savings on a glass structure that would accomplish nothing but bankruptcy. the solar tower, Father Morrison said carefully. Some parishioners are worried about your family’s welfare. They should worry about their own firewood, Marco replied.
I’ve seen three families already with piles too small for winter, perhaps. But glass and sunlight won’t keep your children warm when January comes. The Romans heated their bathous with similar principles 2,000 years ago. The physics haven’t changed. Father Morrison studied him for a long moment. I’ll pray the physics remember themselves when the cold arrives.
Prayer and engineering, Marco replied. One without the other rarely works. What Marco Bianke understood from years in the Morano glass works. Modern solar engineers would later quantify with precision. But the principles he was applying had been used since ancient Rome. civilizations that heated buildings with sunlight centuries before anyone understood the mathematics behind it. The key was the greenhouse effect.
Not the planetary phenomenon, but the original observation that glass enclosures trap heat. Sunlight passes through glass easily, its short wavelengths slipping between molecules like water through a net. But when that light strikes a dark surface and converts to heat, the energy riates as longer infrared wavelengths, these longer waves cannot pass back through glass as easily.
The heat becomes trapped. Marco’s tower would exploit this ruthlessly. 15 ft tall, 4t square, with glass panels on the south, east, and west, faces angled to catch the low winter sun. every interior surface painted black, the darkest black he could mix from soot and oil to absorb maximum light and convert it to thermal energy.
The numbers told the story. On a clear winter day in Nebraska, even with the sun low on the horizon, approximately 250 to 300 BTUs of solar energy strike each square foot of southacing surface per hour. Marco’s tower presented roughly 60 square ft of glass to the winter sun. That meant 15,000 to 18,000 BTUs of potential energy entering the structure every hour of direct sunlight.
Black surfaces absorb over 95% of incoming light. The interior of Marco’s tower, walls, floor, and back panel would convert nearly all that captured sunlight into heat. On a sunny winter day, even when outside temperatures hovered below zero, the tower’s interior would reach 100 to 120° F. But capturing heat was only half the equation.
Moving it was the other half. Hot air rises. Every child who’s watched smoke climb from a candle understands this instinctively. As air warms, its molecules spread apart, making it less dense than the cooler air around it. Buoyancy takes over and the warm air floats upward. Marco designed his tower to weaponize this principle.
As black surfaces heated the enclosed air, that air would rise rapidly toward the top of the 15 ft structure. A 6-in pipe connected the tower’s peak to the cabin’s upper wall, allowing hot air to pour directly into the living space. But rising air creates a vacuum. Something must replace it. This was where the underground tunnel came in.
Marco would dig a tunnel 3 ft deep and 40 ft long, connecting the cabin’s floor level to the base of the tower. As hot air rushed out the top of the tower into the cabin, it pulled cooler air from the cabin floor through the underground passage and into the tower’s base to be heated in turn. The earth surrounding the tunnel maintained a constant 50° pre-tempering the incoming air so the tower didn’t have to work as hard.
The result was a continuous convection loop, a thermal engine with no moving parts, powered entirely by the temperature differential between a sunheated tower and the cooler cabin interior. As long as the sun shone and the tower stayed warmer than the house, air would circulate automatically. No bellows, no fans, no fuel.
Marco calculated the flow rate based on his observations in the Morano drying rooms. A well-designed convection system could move 200 to 400 cubic feet of air per minute. If that air entered the cabin at 90° and exited at 65°, the system would deliver approximately 6,000 to 10,000 BTUs per hour, equivalent to a small wood stove running continuously.
His neighbors saw glass as fragile and sunlight as weak winter decoration. Marco saw a free and endless fuel source pouring from the sky, waiting for someone clever enough to catch it. The sun didn’t care that it was January. It burned the same as always. He just had to build a trap. The construction began in May of 1874, as soon as the ground thought enough to dig.
Marco had ordered the glass months earlier. Thick panes shipped by rail from a manufacturer in Chicago. Each one wrapped in straw and packed in wooden crates. The shipment cost more than most homesteaders spent on their entire cabins. Lucia had watched the crates arrive with an expression that mixed dread with resignation. The underground tunnel came first.
Marco dug alone for 3 weeks, carving a passage 3 ft wide, 3 ft tall, and 40 ft long from the planned cabin location to the tower site. The prairie soil fought him. Dense saw roots for the first foot, then heavy clay that stuck to his shovel like wet cement. He reinforced the tunnel walls with scrap lumber, creating a passage that would carry air without collapsing.
The tunnel floor sloped slightly upward toward the tower, ensuring that any water infiltration would drain back toward a small sump he dug beneath the cabin. The earth surrounding the passage would maintain its constant 50° temperature, pre-warming winter air before it ever reached the solar collector. The tower foundation went in during June.
Marco laid a stone base 4 ft square, sunk 18 in below, grade for stability. The corner posts rose from this foundation. Four heavy timber beams, each one charred black with fire before installation to resist rot and absorb maximum sunlight. The frame took shape through July. Marco built it like a narrow barn with the south face angled back 15° from vertical to better catch the low winter sun.
Cross bracing at every joint ensured the structure could withstand prairie winds that had flattened lesser buildings. He’d seen enough Nebraska storms to respect their power. The glass installation required the most care. Marco had designed removable wooden shutters that could protect the panes during hail storms. hinged panels that swung up from below to cover each section of glass.
The panes themselves sat in frames sealed with a mixture of linseed oil and ground chalk, flexible enough to absorb vibration without cracking. [snorts] The interior painting took two full days. Marco mixed lamp black with linseed oil until he had a paste darker than midnight, then applied it to every interior surface, the back wall, the sidewalls, the floor, even the structural timbers.
When finished, the tower’s interior absorbed light like a hole in the world. The cabin rose in August, positioned precisely to align with the tunnel and the upper pipe connection. [clears throat] Marco hired two Swedish brothers for the heavy timber work, men who asked few questions and appreciated the extra wages.
The structure was modest, 20 ft x 16 ft, but built with unusual attention to air sealing. Every joint was cocked, every gap stuffed with wool and mud. The critical connections came last. The underground tunnel emerged through the cabin’s stone foundation, covered by a wooden grate that allowed air to flow while keeping out vermin.
The upper pipe, a 6-in diameter tin tube, penetrated the wall near the roof line, angled upward toward the tower’s peak. On September 21st, 1874, Marco sealed the final glass panel into place and opened the connecting passages for the first time. The autumn sun, still strong but lower than summer, streamed through the south-facing glass and struck the black interior walls.
Within 30 minutes, the tower’s interior reached 94°. Marco placed his hand over the upper pipe where it entered the cabin. Warm air poured through, steady as breath. A continuous flow from tower to living space. He walked to the floor grate and felt cool air being pulled downward, drawn through the tunnel to replace what the tower consumed.
The convection engine was running. Now he just had to see if it would survive the winter. By late October, Marco Bianke’s glass tower had become the most discussed structure in Lancaster County. Farmers traveling the road to Lincoln would slow their wagons to stare. Some stopped entirely, climbing down to walk closer and examine the strange construction that glinted in the autumn sun like a beacon of foreign madness.
The reactions ranged from bewilderment to outright hostility. “He’s built a lighthouse on the prairie,” one farmer declared at the general store in Lincoln, warming his hands near the pot-bellied stove. 50 mi from the nearest water deep enough to drown in. It’s some kind of Italian church.
Another suggested they worship different over there. Probably praise to the sun like a heathen. Whatever it is, it won’t survive December. First good hail storm will turn that glass into a thousand pieces, and his savings along with it. Hinrich Schultz had watched the tower rise through the summer with growing unease. In early November, he rode over to inspect the completed structure, circling it slowly on horseback while Marco stood in the doorway of his finished cabin.
“It’s still standing,” Schultz admitted. “I’ll grant you that. It’s been standing for 2 months. It will stand for 20 years.” Schultz dismounted and walked closer, pressing his face near the glass to peer at the black interior. It’s like looking into a coal mine. What’s the purpose of painting everything black? Black absorbs sunlight.
White reflects it. I want every bit of heat the sun offers. And these pipes and tunnels, you expect hot air to flow through them by magic. By physics, hot air rises. It has no choice. Schultz stepped back, shaking his head slowly. I’ve seen men try clever ideas on this prairie. Windmills that shattered in storms. Irrigation schemes that flooded fields.
New plows that broke on the first rock. He gestured at the tower. Glass and sunlight won’t keep your family alive when it’s 40 below and the wind is blowing snow sideways. We’ll see. Yes, we will. Schultz mounted his horse. I hope your children are strong, Bianke. they’ll need to be. Lucia faced her own pressures.
At Sunday mass, the Italian women in the congregation, few as they were, whispered concerns about the family’s welfare. Maria Ki, wife of a railroad worker, pulled Lucia aside after the service. “My husband says the men at the depot laugh about your tower,” Maria said quietly. “They’re taking bets on when it will collapse. Let them bet.
” Marco knows what he’s doing. Does he? Because the women are worried about you and the children. If things go badly, you could stay with us until spring. Lucia’s face hardened. Things will not go badly. My husband built furnaces that melted sand into liquid. He understands heat better than anyone in this county. The first hard frost came on November 8th.
Marco woke before dawn and walked to the tower, half expecting to find cracked glass and a failed system. Instead, he found the structure intact, the glass panels beaded with condensation on the outside, but clear and whole. As the sun rose and struck the south-facing glass, he watched the interior temperature climb. 55°, then 65, then 78 by midm morning.
He placed his hand over the pipe entering the cabin and felt warm air flowing steadily, pushed by nothing but the fundamental nature of heated air to rise. The cabin interior, which had dropped to 41° overnight, climbed to 58° by noon without a single log burned. Lucia stood at the floor great, feeling cool air being pulled down into the tunnel. “It’s working.
” “It’s physics,” Marco replied. Physics doesn’t know it’s Nebraska. It just does what it always does. February 1875 arrived with a savagery that even the old-timers struggled to recall. An arctic front descended on Nebraska on February 4th, driving temperatures from a mild 28° to -8 by midnight. By dawn on February 5th, the Mercury had plunged to minus 27.
By the following evening, it touched minus 34, cold enough to freeze exposed flesh in under 2 minutes. But the cold was only half the assault. The wind came screaming across the open prairie at 35 mph, finding every gap in every structure, driving wind chills to numbers that defied survival. Snow blew horizontally, reducing visibility to mere feet.
Men who stepped outside to reach their barns became disoriented within seconds. Across Lancaster County, the desperate battle began. Hinrich Schulz burned through a week’s worth of firewood in the first two days. His cabin, well-built by prairie standards, couldn’t hold heat against the relentless assault. Frost formed on interior walls 6 ft from his roaring stove.
His children slept in a pile with the family dog, wearing every piece of clothing they owned. His wife woke every 90 minutes to feed the fire that consumed their winter supply log by log. The Morrison family, 3 mi south, fared worse. Their wood pile ran critically low by February 6th, and the father made a desperate run to a neighbor’s farm to borrow fuel.
He lost his way in the white out, wandered for 2 hours, and barely survived. His ears turned black with frostbite. Three toes would later require amputation. The Ki family, whose wife had offered Lucia shelter, burned their kitchen table and two chairs, trying to maintain survivable temperatures. They huddled in a single room, abandoning the rest of their cabin to the cold.
At the Bianke homestead, February 5th began like any other winter morning. Marco woke at dawn, checked the overnight temperatures. The cabin had dropped to 44°, cool, but not dangerous, and waited for the sun to rise. By 8:00 a.m., despite outside temperatures of – 31°, sunlight struck the tower’s glass panels.
Marco watched through the cabin window as the black interior surfaces began their work, converting winter light into captured heat. By 10:00 a.m., warm air poured through the upper pipe at 87°. The cabin temperature climbed past 55. By noon, with the sun at its peak, the tower interior reached 112°. The convection engine ran at full power, delivering a continuous stream of heated air that raised the cabin to 64°.
Comfortable shirt sleeve temperature while death prowled outside. Marco hadn’t touched his wood pile in 3 days. The sunny conditions held through February 5th and 6th, giving the Solar tower maximum performance during the worst of the cold. On February 7th, clouds rolled in and cut the solar gain by half, but even diffused winter light pushed the tower to 78°, enough to maintain cabin temperatures in the low50s.
Only on February 8th, when heavy snow clouds blocked the sun entirely, did Marco finally light his stove. He burned a modest fire through the overcast day, using perhaps a quarter of what his neighbors consumed hourly. The cold snap broke on February 10th, 6 days of killing temperatures that had devastated the county, and Marco had burned wood for only two of them.
Hinrich Schulz rode over on February 12th, his face still raw from the cold, his expression haunted by sleepless nights of constant fire feeding. He found Marco splitting wood in the yard at a leisurely pace, a pile that looked barely touched despite the worst week of winter. “How?” Schultz managed. “How are you still standing there with wood to spare?” Marco pointed at the glass tower, still catching the weak February sun, still pumping warm air into his cabin.
“The sun never stopped shining,” he said. “I just built something that could catch it.” Hinrich Schultz stood inside the Bianke cabin, turning slowly, unable to reconcile what he felt with what he knew about Nebraska winters. The air was warm, genuinely warm, not the desperate heat of a roaring stove, but an even comfortable warmth that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
“Show me,” he said quietly. “Show me everything.” Marco retrieved a notebook from the shelf beside his bed. He’d been recording temperatures obsessively since November. Tower readings, cabin readings, outside temperatures, hours of sunlight, wood consumed. The data covered 3 months of winter in careful script. February 5th, Marco read aloud.
Outside temperature at dawn, -31 tower temperature at 10:00 a.m. 94°. Tower temperature at noon, 112°. Cabin temperature at noon, 64°. Wood burned, none. Schultz took the notebook, flipping through pages with trembling hands. The numbers repeated day after day, tower temperatures reaching 80, 90, sometimes over 100°, even when outside air would freeze a man solid.
Cabin temperatures holding in the mid-50s to mid60s through the worst cold the prairie could deliver. February 6th minus 34 outside. Tower reached 108. Cabin held at 61. Wood burned. None. Schultz looked up. You burned no wood for three consecutive days during the worst cold in 20 years. Four days. I lit the stove on the eth when the clouds came. 4 days.
Schultz set the notebook down like it might bite him. I burned nearly two cords in that same period. My children slept in their coats. My wife hasn’t stopped coughing since. Marco walked to the upper pipe where it entered the cabin wall. Put your hand here. Schultz approached cautiously and held his palm over the opening. Warm air flowed against his skin.
Steady, continuous, gentle as summer breath. The tower is at 83° right now, Marco said. Outside is 12 above. The sun is weak today, partly cloudy, but 83° still flows upward because hot air has no choice. It must rise. They walked outside to the tower itself. Schultz circled the structure slowly, studying the angled glass, the protective shutters, the blackened interior visible through the panes.
The construction was solid, professional, not the work of a dreamer, but of a craftsman who understood materials. The underground tunnel, Schultz said, it brings air to the base. From the cabin floor, the cool air gets pulled through 40 ft underground where the earth stays 50°. By the time it reaches the tower, it’s already warmed.
The tower heats it the rest of the way. And this continues as long as the sun shines. Every hour of every sunny day, even cloudy days give partial heating. Only full darkness or heavy storm clouds stop it completely. Schultz pressed his hand against the tower’s sunwarmed glass. I called this madness. I told everyone you would freeze.
You didn’t understand how it worked. Neither did anyone else. But you understood. You came from Italy and you understood something no one on this prairie had ever considered. I came from glass works where we use the sun to dry materials. The principle is old. The application is new. Marco gestured at the endless prairie around them.
Nebraska has more sunny winter days than almost anywhere in Europe. All that energy falling from the sky and everyone ignores it. They’d rather cut trees. Schultz was quiet for a long moment. Can it be built by a man who doesn’t know glass? The glass is the easy part. Any glazier in Lincoln can cut pains. The design is what matters.
the angles, the tunnel, the connections. Those I can teach. Schultz extended his hand. Then teach me. I have sons who are tired of cutting wood. We’ll start when the ground thaws. Marco shook the offered hand. Bring your notebook. There’s much to learn. The first visitor after Heinrich Schultz was Father Morrison, who arrived on February 15th with a basket of bread and a head full of questions.
He’d spent the cold snap conducting emergency prayers for families who feared they wouldn’t survive the night. Now he stood in Marco’s warm cabin, feeling heat flow from a pipe connected to a glass tower, struggling to reconcile faith with physics. The Romans, Marco reminded him, they heated their bathous with sunlight and thermal mass 2,000 years ago.
This isn’t new. It’s just forgotten. Then perhaps, Father Morrison replied slowly, “God gives us the sun not just for light, but for warmth, if we’re wise enough to use it.” By the end of February, Marco had hosted 11 families in his cabin, each one arriving skeptical and leaving converted. They pressed their hands against the warm pipe, felt cool air being drawn through the floor grate, and watched the tower’s black interior shimmer with captured heat.
The same men who’d laughed at the Italian oven now sat at Marco’s table sketching diagrams and asking questions about glass angles and tunnel depths. Hinrich Schulz was first to commit to building his own. He arrived in early March with his three sons, notebooks in hand, ready to learn everything Marco could teach.
“The tunnel is the hardest part,” Marco explained, walking them through the construction sequence. 40 ft of digging properly reinforced. The tower itself goes up in 2 weeks if you have the glass ready. And the glass? Where do we get pains that thick? Chicago. I’ll give you the name of the manufacturer. Order in March. They’ll arrive by May.
The Schultz family broke ground on their tunnel in April. Marco visited twice weekly, checking the excavation angle, advising on reinforcement, ensuring the passage would channel air efficiently. The sons worked with fierce determination. Young men who remembered huddling in frozen blankets while their father fed an insatiable stove.
By June, the Schultz Tower stood complete. Not as tall as Marcos, only 12 ft, but built to the same principles. black interior, angled glass, underground tunnel connecting to their cabin’s foundation. Heinrich lit no fire on the first cool September night, trusting the residual heat from the day’s sun. His cabin held at 54° until morning.
“It works,” he told Marco the next day, his voice thick with emotion. The sun heated my home while I slept. Words spread beyond Lancaster County. A journalist from the Lincoln newspaper visited in October 1875, writing an article about the Italian suncatcher that ran with an illustration of Marco’s tower.
Letters arrived from Kansas, Iowa, Dakota territory. Farmers desperate for any alternative to the endless labor of firewood. Marco answered every letter. He drew diagrams, explained the physics, provided the names of glass suppliers and the specifications for tunnel construction. He charged nothing for this knowledge, refusing even postage reimbursement.
In Morano, the masters taught the apprentices. He told Lucia one evening, sealing another envelope. If they had hoarded their secrets, the glass works would have died in a single generation. Knowledge shared is knowledge that survives. By the winter of 1876, seven solar towers operated in Lancaster County.
Three more were under construction. The men who built them gathered monthly at Marco’s cabin, sharing observations, comparing temperatures, discussing improvements. They called themselves the sun farmers, and they spoke of Marco with reverence usually reserved for preachers and war heroes. Lucia watched her husband become the center of a quiet revolution.
The same neighbors who’d whispered about Italian madness now sought his counsel on angles and excavation. “You proved them all wrong,” she said one night. “The son proved them wrong,” Marco replied. “I just built the trap that caught it.” Marco Bianke lived another 37 years on that Lancaster County homestead.
He died in 1912, surrounded by children and grandchildren who’d grown up in a cabin warmed by sunlight rather than endless labor. The original glass tower stood until 1934 when a tornado finally accomplished what 60 Nebraska winters could not. By then, Marco’s grandson had already built a replacement using modern materials, the same principles, updated for a new century.
The winter of 1875 remained the benchmark against which all subsequent winters were measured. Old-timers would ask each other, “Is it as bad as 75?” And the answer was, “Almost never yes.” But even mild winters killed livestock and exhausted families who fought the cold with nothing but firewood and desperation. Every frozen morning reminded them of what Marco had proven possible.
By 1885, solar heating towers had spread across the Nebraska plains and into neighboring Kansas, Iowa, and Dakota territory. Agricultural journals published articles about the Italian method of passive solar heating. The Nebraska State Agricultural Society invited Marco to speak at their annual meeting in 1880. The immigrant once mocked as a sun worshipping fool now addressing an audience of 500 farmers hungry for knowledge that could save their winters.
The sun asks nothing for its heat. Marco told them it shines whether we use it or not. The question is whether we’re wise enough to stop ignoring what falls freely from the sky. Hinrich Schulz never burned more than one cord of wood per winter after building his tower. His sons built their own homesteads with solar heating as the first priority before wells, before barns, before anything else.
The Schultz family would remain in Lancaster County for four generations, and every home they built faced south with glass ready to catch the light. The principle Marco understood, using transparent surfaces to trap solar energy and natural convection to distribute it, appears today in passive solar design worldwide. Modern sunspaces, traum walls, and solar chimneys all descend from the same physics that heated Marco’s Nebraska cabin.
The mathematics have been refined. The materials improved with double pane glass and selective coatings, but the core insight remains unchanged. The sun delivers free heat and hot air rises without being asked. What Marco knew, what the Roman bath house engineers knew, what the Venetian glass workers knew was that fighting nature wastess energy while cooperating with nature multiplies it.
His neighbors attacked Winter with axes and sweat, cutting trees, splitting logs, hauling fuel in an endless battle they could never truly win. Marco surrendered that battle entirely. He let the sun fight for him, building a system that converted free light into free heat while he sat warm and rested. The lesson extends beyond solar towers.
Every problem has brute force solutions that exhaust those who attempt them and elegant solutions that harness forces already in motion. Marco’s neighbors saw winter as an enemy to be defeated through effort. Marco saw winter as a season with weak sun angles and strong temperature differentials, conditions perfectly suited to driving convection if someone built the right channels.
Lucia outlived Marco by 5 years. She spent her final winters in the cabin they’d built together, warmed by the replacement tower her grandson had constructed. After she passed, her daughter found a letter tucked into the family Bible written in Lucia’s careful Italian script. I called it madness when he showed me the drawings.
I thought he would freeze us all chasing sunlight. Instead, he caught what everyone else ignored and turned it into warmth. The sun shone for everyone. Only Marco thought to hold out his hands. The tower is gone now, replaced by modern furnaces and insulated walls. But the sun still shines on Lancaster County.
Winter after winter, free heat falling on everyone who thinks to catch
