Antecedentes

You are spot on! In August 1882, French engineer Abel Pifre successfully demonstrated a groundbreaking solar-powered printing press in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. [1]

The setup and demonstration featured several incredible details:

The Inventor: Pifre was an assistant to Augustin Mouchot, who pioneered the first solar engines. After Mouchot lost his government funding due to cheap coal, Pifre continued and refined the solar technology.
The Engine: The device was built around a large concave parabolic mirror that measured 3.5 meters (nearly 12 feet) in diameter. This mirror concentrated the sun's rays onto a central cylindrical boiler to create steam.
The Press: The steam generated drove a vertical horsepower motor, which was then connected to a Marinoni printing press.
The Publication: Even under intermittently cloudy conditions, the machine successfully ran for hours, printing around 500 copies an hour of a special journal created for the event, which was named the "Soleil-Journal". [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

You can read more about the historical event and the mechanics of his device in the documented coverage preserved on Wikipedia's Abel Pifre Article or the original Scientific American Article published in 1882

Abel Pifre (1852–1928), was a French engineer who developed the first solar power printing press. He was initially an assistant to Augustin Bernard Mouchot who developed the first solar engine, but later developed solar technologies independently of his mentor.

Pifre demonstrated his press at a meeting of the Union Francaise de la Jeunesse at the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris on 6 August 1882.

The device consisted of a concave mirror 3.5 meters in diameter centering on a cylindrical steam boiler, which powered a small vertical engine of 2/5 horse power, and then driving a Marioni type printing-press.

Even under semi-overcast conditions, the press operated continuously from 1:00 pm to 5:30 pm, producing approximately five hundred copies per hour of a journal which was produced specifically for the event with the appropriate name "Soleil-Journal".

Printing a Journal By Solar Heat

References

La Nature Journal[permanent dead link] Gaston Tissandier, 26 August 1882, p 193

Tissandier G. Utilization de la Chaleur du Soleil—Imprimerie Solaire. La Nature Journal 1882 Aug 26; No. 482, pg.193 http://cnum.cnam.fr/PDF/cnum_4KY28.19.pdf Note: scroll to page 198 of the CNUM PDF.

A. G. Eneas (Aubrey G. Eneas) was a pioneering inventor who patented early solar thermal power systems. His engines used massive, truncated-cone reflectors to concentrate the sun's rays onto a central steam boiler, which then powered steam engines for water pumping and agriculture.

His contributions to early concentrating solar power are detailed in the following 1901 United States patents:

United States Patent 670,916: Granted on March 26, 1901, for his design of a Solar Motor. This patent primarily covered the mechanical structure of the large, umbrella-like solar concentrator used to capture sunlight.
United States Patent 670,917: Also granted on March 26, 1901, this patent was for an improved Solar Motor. This iteration detailed the specific tracking mechanisms and the boiler apparatus used to convert concentrated sunlight into usable steam.

Eneas is most famously remembered for successfully installing and operating one of his massive solar engines in 1901 at the Ostrich Farm in South Pasadena, California. His commercialized systems were capable of producing up to \(10\) to \(15\) horsepower, proving the viability of solar thermal energy generations decades before modern photovoltaic panels.