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The Steam Turbine 197 paratus, the steam being induced to rotate a sphere or globe mounted on trunnions by the impingement of the vapour jet upon the atmosphere. Whatever was accomplished with such a device as described by Hero, history does not relate. Appar- ently a further seventeen hundred years sped by before the idea underwent a serious revival. Then an Italian experimenter named Branca devised a little machine comprising a horizontal wheel, around the periphery of which vanes were set. A jet of steam was brought to bear upon these vanes and caused the wheel to revolve. The power thus obtained in this primitive manner was utilised to drive a small mill for grinding drugs. This represents, so far as we are able to ascertain, the first commercial attempt to use the steam turbine. While the steam turbine was the first steam- engine to be invented, it was the last type of steam- engine to be developed. From time to time brilliant minds attacked the problem, but they failed to. make any decisive headway. Certainly they contributed meagre results of any constructive value. It was not until the early ’eighties of the nineteenth century that a distinct advance was made. In fact, the steam turbine may be said to have been reborn, inasmuch as this latest advance, which ushered in the era of this type of engine, was as different from all previous efforts in this field as is the modern fighting ship from the prehistoric oar-propelled galley. No doubt the trend of thought which has been centred for centuries upon the turbine or rotary engine became diverted into another channel through the achievement of Newcomen and Watt. Their work