Make posted a few articles on solar furnaces yesterday. (link, link) Here’s a companion peice from 1954 with a few that get up to 8,000 degrees F. I particularly like the solar cigarette lighter on page two.

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Sun Furnace Goes to Work
A man-made inferno tries out materials for jet and rocket engines—and shows one way to capture free solar power.

By Alden P. Armagnac

ATOP a 6,000-foot mountain near San Diego, Calif., they’re harnessing the sun to help build airplanes. A solar furnace newly installed there focuses the sun’s rays, with a 10-foot-diameter mirror of polished aluminum, upon a spot smaller than a dime. It surpasses by far the temperature of the hottest blowtorch or electric furnace.

Researchers of the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation apply the sun furnace’s terrific heat to materials under trial for jet and rocket engines and for guided missiles. Aim of their experiments is to develop substances more resistant to heat and thermal shock than any yet known—stuff that won’t soften and flow, say, when a long-range missile screams back to the earth from dizzy altitudes.

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Sun’s Rays Harnessed to Run Steam Engine

One of man’s great ambitions— to harness the sun to a steam engine—has been achieved. Dr. C. G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has developed a solar heater and demonstrated that it would operate a one-half horsepower steam engine with sufficient efficiency for commercial purposes. The sun’s rays are his fuel. Caught in three parabolic cylindrical mirrors of sheet aluminum, the rays are reflected in high concentration upon tubes of Pyrex glass.

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