What crucial design feature distinguished modern solar lanterns from earlier, fragile personal solar lights?
Answer
Inflatable design
The most crucial difference separating the successful modern portable solar lanterns from earlier attempts lay in the packaging and durability of the unit itself. Early personal solar lights often employed rigid plastic casings, which were both cumbersome and prone to fragility when being shipped in bulk, especially into disaster zones. The innovation, exemplified by the LuminAID/Luci model, was the engineering shift to an inflatable design, allowing the unit to fold flat and minimize shipping volume.
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