Oct. 25--Two assembly lines wind through the large, well-lit, humidity-controlled, brilliantly white room. Around the clock, workers tend the lines that each day bear 50,000 plain, thin squares on a six-hour journey from silicon wafer to solar cell.

Passed along from one machine to the next, each hand-sized ingot is weighed, shaped and reweighed, bathed, etched and cleaned, heated, cooled, lasered and tested.

As it nears the trip's end, every cell is picked up by a technician who scans it for flaws that the machines might have missed. On the wall over his shoulder is a large American flag.

The symbolism is fitting, says Bryan Ashley, vice president of the Norcross-based company.

To the country and the economy, as well as to 100-employee Suniva, manufacturing matters, he said. "In order to have a strong economy, you have to make things. We can't all be doctors and lawyers.

"We at Suniva are proud of the fact that we started in the United States. We are the only ones who make high-efficiency solar cells in the U.S.A."

But American domination of global manufacturing ended a long time ago as a series of sectors disappeared or sent production overseas where labor, like materials, was cheap and regulations lax.

Perhaps U.S. manufacturers cannot compete against low-cost locations when it comes to making high-volume, low-margin commodities.

But the next step in technology need not be made overseas, Ashley said. "We are going to stay in the United States. We can be competitive here."

Here happens to be a metro region saturated with service businesses, where a maker of things stands out. Yet Suniva, which started churning out solar cells a year ago Saturday, has its roots close to the heart of Atlanta.

The company evolved from the work of Ajeet Rohatgi, a professor at Georgia Tech's photovoltaics center.

That proximity is one of the company's advantages, said Derick Hill, Suniva's integrator network manager. "We could take something directly from research to production within 24 hours."

Suniva is targeting one of this century's potentially huge markets, because when it comes to using the sun to make electricity, the sky is the limit.

Consider the alternatives -- until recently, all much cheaper and easier than solar. For the most part, they remain cheaper, but coal spurs environmental concerns, nuclear power means huge investments and safety worries. Meanwhile, oil supplies are in question, with much of it lying beneath politically shaky sands.

Yet the sun shines on pretty much the whole planet.