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
Gordon Lewis (engineer) Tornado. His patented devices cover a forty-year span, and he remained active in many aspects of turbine engine work well into the 21st century. He died in Bristol on 4 October 2010. Gordon Lewis (engineer) Gordon Manns Lewis CBE FREng (24 June 1924 – 4 October 2010) was a British aeronautical engineer who made significant contributions to the arts and sciences of turbine engine design. He was born in Cheltenham in 1924, the son of a clerk on the Great Western Railway. He won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Oxford and graduated in Engineering Science in 1944. He joined the