THE TURBINE ENGINE. 



BY CHARLES C. FITZMORRIS. 



rCharlcs C. Fitzmorris, journalist; was born May 1, 1884, at Fort Wayne, Ind.; 

 educated at the public schools ; became a member of the staff of the Chicago American 

 in 1902; has been staff correspondent for that paper ajid is author of many articles 

 for newspapers and magazines.] 



Hero, an ancient Roman, living in the last generation but 

 one before the beginning of the Christian era, placed a wheel 

 without a rim in a stream of water and invented, B.C. 120, 

 the first power producing machine— the water wheel. Almost 

 seventeen hundred years later, in 1829, Branca, a Spaniard, 

 substituted a jet of steam for the stream of water, drove the 

 steam, at an angle, against depressions in the rim of the wheel 

 and invented the turbine engine. 



To-day, two thousand years after the invention of the 

 water wheel, engineers, working with the same principle, 

 using steam instead of water, as Branca did, have developed 

 the turbine engine to a point where it produces as high as 

 8,000 horsepower. Yet, in its present stage, the turbine 

 engine is so far from being a perfected piece of machinery that 

 engineers style this the beginning of the age of the turbine 



engine. 



George Westinghouse, in an interview, said of the turbine : 

 ''We need not call the turbine engine a new or an untried 

 invention. Its period of usefulness is but beginning. We 

 shall build up a great turbine industry in these United States. 

 There are turbines in the United States in operation now that 

 produce, combined, 60,000 horsepower, and there are 150,000 

 horsepower more contracted for at Pittsburg alone. The im- 

 portance of the turbine, especially the marine turbine, cannot 

 be overestimated. For passenger ships, freight ships, yachts, 

 and for battle ships, not less than torpedo boats, the turbine 

 is unquestionably the best engine. Its compactness recom- 

 mends it for all classes of boats and its freedom from all 

 vibration makes it the best for pleasure craft particularly." 



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