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
The Thames (steamship) The Thames (steamship) The Thames was a British steamship lost in 1877 while exploring the western part of the northeast passage (the sea route east from Europe to northern Russia and East Asia which runs north of Siberia). With financial backing from Charles Gardiner, Joseph Wiggins – an experienced sea captain who had already twice sailed to the north of Russia, once entering the Kara Sea – purchased "The Thames", a 120 ton screw steamer, with the intent of surveying the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei River and returning with profitable cargo. "The Thames" left Vardø in Norway on