Steam engines have been around since the mid- seventeenth century. Noisy monsters, they used steam pressure to push pistons and turn engines, but they were massively inefficient and expensive to run. Engineers and inventors were aware that their machines made inefficient use of steam, and were looking for a better system to harness all that energy. In 1884 British engineer Charles Parsons (1854-1931), head of the electrical section of a ship manufacturer, patented the first steam turbine, which he used as the power source for an electrical generator that he had also built.
Using incredibly fast jets of steam had been causing inventors problems because they were just too rapid to use. At low pressure, steam jets were still reaching speeds of more than 1,000 miles per hour (1,610 kph), and at high pressure as much as twice that.
Spinning a turbine blade at such a speed would rip it apart. However, Parsons managed to slow down slightly the movement of steam from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. By setting up the turbine in a series of stages, he made the differences in pressure small enough to move the steam fast, but not too fast. The resulting engine turned over fifty times as quickly as the best of the old designs, which marked an enormous leap forward.
Parsons's steam turbine was fitted for use in electrical generating stations in 1891. Its application to marine propulsion meant that steamers and warships could travel much faster than before—in 1897 the ship Turbinia achieved the speed of 34.5 knots, making it the fastest ship in the world at that time. Steam turbines are still used in power stations today.
