Editing Turbine (section)

== History ==

[[Hero of Alexandria]] demonstrated the turbine principle in an [[aeolipile]] in the first century AD and [[Vitruvius]] mentioned them around 70 BC.

Early turbine examples are [[windmill]]s and [[waterwheel]]s.

The word "turbine" was first applied to this kind of device in 1822 by the French mining engineer [[Claude Burdin]] in a memo, "Des turbines hydrauliques ou machines rotatoires à grande vitesse", which he submitted to the [[French Academy of Sciences|Académie royale des sciences]] in Paris.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=rzNCAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA183 ''Annales de chimie et de physique'', vol. 21, page 183 (1822)]</ref> The word derives from the Latin {{lang|la|turbo}}, meaning "[[vortex]]" or "[[Spinning top|top]]", and was in use in French to describe certain seashells.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://artflsrv04.uchicago.edu/philologic4.7/publicdicos/bibliography?head=turbine |title=Dictionnaires d'autrefois |access-date=8 February 2025}}</ref> However, it was not until 1824 that a committee of the Académie (composed of Prony, Dupin, and Girard) reported favorably on Burdin's memo.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=03BRAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA207 "Rapport sur le mémoire de M. Burdin intitulé: Des turbines hydrauliques ou machines rotatoires à grande vitesse" (Report on the memo of Mr. Burdin titled: Hydraulic turbines or high-speed rotary machines), ''Annales de chimie et de physique'', vol. 26, pages 207-217. Prony and Girard (1824)]</ref> [[Benoit Fourneyron]], a former student of Claude Burdin, built the first practical water turbine.

Credit for invention of the steam turbine is given both to Anglo-Irish engineer [[Charles Algernon Parsons|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.