The system could be set with its axis AA’ parallel to the Earth’s rotation axis ( an equatorial mount type arrangement — presumably with each model would come the possibility of slight tilt adjustment of the equatorial mount axis to the exact value of the local latitude). Simple tracking around this axis was achieved with ropes pulling on rings C and C’, powered by a clock type mechanism, fixed to the ground immediately below. This would ensure that the sun would always be on a plane perpendicular to the plane of the equatorial mount structure. To concentrate its radiation on the furnace entrance, the system would now move the mirror assembly itself together with the furnace around axis BB’, making the furnace describe an arc of a circle on some sort of a "rail”, with centre on the line BB’. On bar D there was a pulley-chain mechanism to accomplish this movement. This adjustment, done on a daily basis, would ensure that the axis of the paraboloid would point to the sun at all time, during each day, since this whole system also moved as one with the equatorial mount! In short this corresponds to the present day complex 2 axis tracking with step or variable speed electrical motors, with sun sensors and/or computer assistance used in high concentration solar optics, substituted by a simple clock — constant speed — and potentially very accurate tracking system!. Indeed a very clever and practical solution, essential for the very high concentration Father Himalaya set out to achieve and otherwise outright impossible in a practical way, without the devices we have today.

The device was operated during the fair, to the amazement of its countless visitors. The best measure of its success is the fact that it got the Grand Prize.

Several books [15,16,17] and newspapers of the day[18, 19,20,21]referred to this event, reporting specifically about the Pyrheliophoro. There was even a mention of it in Scientific American [22]. In Portugal there were countless references in the press [1].

Father Himalaya only got three very clear days during which he claims to have obtained at least 3800°C, a very impressive achievement for the day.

U. S. Entrepreneurs wanted to take it (or make copies of it) to display its capabilities for the public in other fairs. The fact that iron was so easily melted or that it could turn into smoke, almost instantaneously, a piece of wood placed in the furnace was true source of wonderment for everybody.

Father Himalaya would have none of it. He wanted his system to be used in more noble applications, as he put it, namely in industries like those requiring higher temperatures than the ones obtainable at that time through combustion or electric arcs (<3500°C).

He got nowhere in his fights over what to do with the system, its potential buyers and the U. S. patent office which never granted him the classification of industrial interest that he so desperately wanted. Perhaps this is why so little was written by him directly about it.

The Pyreheliophero was dismantled, not before Father Himalaya tried — and did not succeed — to give it to the local University. He tried also other institutions, like the Carnegie Institute, but to no avail. It could also not stay on the fair grounds. The decision came from a Mr. Skinker, invoking two major flaws he had found in the system’s design. He didn’t write about which ones.

It vanished after a while. Robbed, to be destroyed, as some claim? Dismantled and simply carried away, piece by piece and lost in time and place? It certainly enjoyed a very bright, but very short career, right at the dawn of the oil era.