All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

CHAPTER IX The Steam Turbine Although the comparatively new science of elec- tricity is making tremendous headway and is work- ing a wonderful revolution, we must not forget that the present is essentially the age of steam. Indeed, in many countries electricity is the servant of steam, because without the latter it would be almost impossible to produce the former. Incidentally the advance of electricity has in itself precipitated a striking change in the methods of using steam, more particularly for the generation of the “ juice,” as the invisible current is facetiously called. This revolutionary steam-raising force is the turbine. We are apt to regard the steam turbine as a wonder of the past quarter of a century, but, as a matter of fact, it represents the oldest method of harnessing steam to perform some useful task of which we know. It antedated the steam-engine, with which we are most familiar—the latter representing essentially the activity and inventiveness of Newcomen and Watt __by centuries. The Egyptian philosopher Hero de- scribes a steam-driven turbine in his book on “ Pneu- matics,” which was written over a hundred years before the dawn of the Christian era. This, however, according to the facts which have been handed down to us, was nothing more than a demonstration ap- 196