Turbine waterwheels. Gas, steam, and water turbines have a casing around the blades that contains and controls the working fluid. Credit for invention of the steam turbine is given both to Anglo-Irish engineer Sir Charles Parsons (1854–1931) for invention of the reaction turbine, and to Swedish engineer Gustaf de Laval (1845–1913) for invention of the impulse turbine. Modern steam turbines frequently employ both reaction and impulse in the same unit, typically varying the degree of reaction and impulse from the blade root to its periphery. The word "turbine" was coined in 1822 by the French mining engineer Claude Burdin from the
Westinghouse Combustion Turbine Systems Division the development of a 2000 hp (~1500 kW) gas turbine generator set, the W21. It had a thermal efficiency of 18% (LHV). The first application of the W21 in an industrial setting was in 1948 as a gas-compressor drive installed at the Mississippi River Fuel Corp. facility located at Wilmar, Arkansas. Reports have it that this was the first industrial gas turbine in the world to accumulate 100,000 hours of operation before it was retired. By 1948, Westinghouse also built an experimental 4000 hp gas turbine-driven locomotive with the Baldwin Company (Chester, PA) that used two of these units. Initial