Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon

Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon (1854-1931), British engineer who invented the first practical steam turbine, revolutionizing electricity generation and marine transport. Parsons, son of William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, was brought up at the family home in Parsonstown, Ireland. After studying mathematics and physics at Trinity College, Dublin, and St John’s College, Cambridge, he began an engineering apprenticeship at Sir William Armstrong & Co. In 1884, now a partner in another firm, he began to develop a steam turbine for the purpose of directly driving dynamos, hitherto powered by piston engines and transmission belts. He maximized the efficiency of the turbine by using sets of moving blades alternating with stationary ones, and dividing the passage of the steam into a series of pressure drops. These ideas are still fundamental to turbine design.

Parsons founded his own firm in 1889 and built turbo-generators for use in power stations on land. Then he set up another company to build turbines to drive ships; many of his engines were built specifically to provide electrical lighting power for ships at sea. He built a 44-tonne motor vessel called the Turbinia, and in a famous publicity stunt invaded the Spithead naval review of 1897, marking the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria. Travelling at up to 34 knots (63 km/h, 39 mph) the nimble Turbinia could be seen speeding past conventional vessels and could not be stopped. Soon, Parsons was building turbine-powered warships and passenger ships. Later he adapted the turbine for smaller merchant craft and after World War I developed the high-pressure steam turbine.

From his father, a distinguished astronomer, Parsons acquired an interest in glass for optical instruments, and ran his own glassworks, which built several major astronomical reflecting telescopes. He was appointed a KCB in 1911, elected to The Royal Society in 1898, and was knighted in 1911.