Sawston Village History Society

From Galaxies to Turbines, by David Bard

The talk covered the activities of two members of the Parsons family, William, 3rd Lord of Rosse, 1800-67 and his youngest son Charles Algernon, 1854-1931. The family could trace its origins to the Elizabethan settlements. Established at Birr Castle, (modern County Offaly), by the nineteenth century, they were well established members of the Anglo Irish nobility. Following his education at Trinity College Dublin and Magdalen College Oxford, William developed an interest in astronomy and in collaboration with his wife, Mary Field started constructing telescopes, culminating in a 6ft Newtonian reflector which remained the largest telescope in the World for 72 years. With this he was able to observe nebulae and show bodies that had been thought to consist of diffuse gas were, in fact, clusters of feint and distant stars.

His son, John Algernon Parsons, having completed studies at Trinity College Dublin, moved to St. John’s College Cambridge and graduated 11th Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos in 1877. He then took the unusual step of buying into a premium apprenticeship at Armstrong’s Elswick works (Newcastle). He became interested in developing high speed steam engines for driving electricity generators and after developing an epicyclic engine, which failed to gain commercial backing, began to work on developing steam turbines.

The first commercial power station to use Parson’s turbines was built at Forth Banks in Newcastle (1888) and the second at Thompson’s Lane in Cambridge (1892). These were followed by Scarborough (1893) and Portsmouth (1894). By the end of the decade, steam turbines had become the accepted method for driving electricity generators.

In the early 1890s Charles became interested in applying steam turbines to marine propulsion and constructed a prototype ship ‘Turbinia’. After several years overcoming problems with propellor cavitation, this vessel was able to achieve 35 knots, unprecedented at the time. Parsons demonstrated Turbinia at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Review at Spithead (26th June, 1897) and sufficiently impressed the Admiralty that, despite setbacks with two experimental ships, Viper (wrecked of Alderney) and Cobra (sank off Cromer), turbine technology was installed in Dreadnought (1906) and all successive battleships of WW1. By 1907, turbines were being used to power the Mauretania, the largest and fastest passenger liner of its age.

Post WW1, Parsons whilst continuing to develop the turbine, became involved in several other enterprises, saving the Derby Crown Glass Company when Government subsidies were withdrawn after the war and forming a partnership with the telescope and scientific instrument manufacturer Howard Grubb when that firm got into financial difficulties in 1926. He also made several unsuccessful attempts to produce artificial diamonds, designing an implosion device similar to that used to detonate ‘fat man’, the plutonium atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

He died in 1931 and is commemorated in a stained glass window in Westminster Abbey.

David Bard