I love that the Royal navy refused to purchase the original steam turbine. Which lead to the inventor becoming so angry that he built Turbinia and raced her straight through the naval review. Easily avoiding the navys fastest old school torpedo boats.
Turbinia was launched in 1894. So 130 years ago. Built by Charles Parsons based in Wallsend-on-Tyne. Parsons' ship turned up unannounced at the Navy Review for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria at Spithead, on 26 June 1897, in front of the Prince of Wales, foreign dignitaries, and Lords of the Admiralty. As an audacious publicity stunt, Turbinia, which was much faster than any other ship at the time, raced between the two lines of navy ships and steamed up and down in front of the crowd and princes, while easily evading a navy picket boat that tried to pursue her, almost swamping it with her wake.
DeLaval still makes oil/water separators also. I disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled one every day when I was in the Navy. Our ship’s fuel (1/2 a million gallons) was stored in tanks in the bottom of the ship. Since you only want a fuel/air mixture in your engines (gas turbine propulsion), not in the tanks, the fuel was “floated” on seawater to keep the storage tanks full of liquids. This meant that to get the water (and any solids) out of the fuel, we had to run it through a purifier. This machine, made by DeLeval, was essentially a centrifuge. The fuel/water mix was injected from the bottom, spun at high speed to separate it, and then the fuel was drained off the inside layer while the water was drained off the outer layer. Sludge was captured on the surfaces, which is why the whole cleaning thing. This particular design was famous for catching fire when the bottom bearing failed, which destroyed the bottom rotary seal, dumping fuel oil on the now red hot bearing housing.
Ah, the oil purifier. I never quite got the magic knowledge down to get that thing running proper in my time on board lol. I'll take the feed pump startup (single stage steam driven for the uninitiated) instead please.
Heh. I am familiar with the device as well. My employer delivers the drive belt powering the rotor. We occasionally her from them when the belt does not perform as expected...
That name brought back unpleasant memories of cleaning DeLavel lube oil seperators... removing carbon from the 50+ stainless cones. The fuel oil sep wasn't so bad. All part of the watch routine duties some 26 years ago. :-)
Steam turbine power stations use Alpha Laval oil separators. It was the out put from one of these that let us know our turbine was letting oil into the HP turbine shaft. The hot oil was cracking to petrol at about 50 imperial gallons per day. Fixing that was very long story.
My dad was a marine engineer on HMS Fearless, it was the last steam turbine driven ship in the royal navy. He and his coleagues figured out it burned about 4 gallons of heavy oil per foot at full tilt.
Your mention of DeLaval unsuccessful steam "rocket" engines triggered a memory of the DeLaval dairy equipment suppliers in all the small dairy towns in New Zealand, so I was chuffed to then hear they were the same company, cleverly transformed. Thanks for the cool history lesson Scott!
Fascinating history lesson. I had no idea turbines had been developed so early. It seems the 1890’s were to mechanical innovation what the 1990’s were to electronic innovation.
Agree. The 1890’s saw new technologies being introduced that are still with us today, and which made possible the tremendous advances of the 20th century. It must have need a heady time for tech enthusiasts of the day!
Boeing rebuilt an airplane factory with turbine-powered belt drives to run machines. My modern factory ran on a huge, screw compressor. Funny that using gases to do work has been around so long.
Yes, such “positive development” happens when most of society is, eh… positive to whatever is developed, gaining _something_ from it. And… positivity vanes when or if (critical part of) society can’t see what / who any “development” actually contributes to. Recurrent, still never familiar - since the “positivity cycle” is around three-four generations of time passing…
What we need next are some real breakthroughs in material science. I'm thinking of more effective rockets, easy atmospheric reentry and self-sealing orbital modules. Einstein knew already how to manipulate gravity;• that was 120 years ago. Yet our materials can not even handle 0.1% of the needed energy. 🚀🏴☠️🎸
The direct link between steam turbines and rocket engines was the book "Steam Turbines" by Aurel Stodola, published in the early 20th century. He made the definitive study of the de Laval nozzle, establishing for the first time that it did produced supersonic flow. This book was the main reference for the German rocket engine designers.
She's been chopped in half too, which is a shame. Apparently at one stage they wanted to exhibit her somewhere she wouldn't fit, so out came the saws...
That naval review where Turbinia stole the show was Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. This is recounted in the opening chapter of Robert K. Massie’s “Dreadnaught”.
Water is only the reactive mass. It holds no energy in itself. Steam does, only not for very long time. Coal and oil contain energy. Also wood;• and even diamonds could serve as a propellant. 🚀🏴☠️🎸
It is wrong, coal isn't ejected out the back at high velocity to propel the craft. It's a bit more complicated for a vehicle which operates in a fluid like a jet or boat, but strictly speaking the coal is fuel and the water going over the propellers is the propellant. Luckily there's always more of it, which is what makes rockets so much harder than terrestrial vehicles.
I worked on offshore drilling rigs, and they are powered by large diesel engines. All of our diesel fuel went though a fuel/water separator to remove any water that contaminated the fuel. The were De Leval separators. They are still widely used to this day.
As a docent at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, I was aware of Lord Ross' great telescope known as the Leviathan of Parsonstown, but did not know of the connection to the Parsons Steam Turbines. Thanks Scott.
@@Anti_Woke Speaking of age I was happy to learn just now that Burke is alive (and hopefully well) at age 87. Those who enjoyed "Connections" may also like his "The Day the Universe Changed"
On the family farm (in Sweden) there was a hand cranked cast iron DeLaval milk separator, now I wonder where it went when the farm was sold 20 years ago.
A nation of engineers. My father was in the Merchant Navy, and he claimed that if you opened the engine room voice tube on any cargo ship and yelled “Scotty” down it, someone would answer.
Shout out to HMS Dreadnought, the first battleship equipped with steam turbines and a uniform main gun battery that started a naval building arms race between Britain and Germany.
I had no idea that the Leviathan telescope's maker was the Father of the steam-turbine Parsons. What was it about Scotland in that period that produced so many outstanding engineers?
Edinburgh was possibly the main centre for the enlightenment. Helped by the Scottish Church being separate from the Church of England and not part of the establishment. This meant there was a stronger culture of inquisitiveness about natural phenomena - although England was hardly poor in this regard!
The Enlightenment. The population of Scotland were all taught to read and write, and education become normal for peasants. That is how Scotland engineered everything we take for granted today. Currently Scotland is the most educated country in Europe. The stats show 48% of the people living in Scotland are educated to Hons degree or above.
I had good fortune to look at prototype Parsons turbine in Birr Castle in Ireland. It was used to run the generator to power the Castle and Village. Good trip. Also realised that Scott is talking about it right now 😂
@@RalooRocker It's beside the gate opposite visitor's centre. Funnily enough at first glance I just took it for a piece of junk to be moved away because it looks so modern and completely familiar. I guess if it works, don't change it 😁. There is also a small museum there in which I spent a good while, salivating at all the steampunk goodies 😁
A history episode about Tycho Brahe would be fun. His great accomplishments and his bizarre antics (like a drunken borrowed moose falling down his stairs at a party) and agonizing death by prostate.
Visiting the museum in Roswell, NM they have a big collection of Robert Goddard stuff. In one of the cases there were turbine parts made out of lids from chewing tobacco containers! Poverty truly is the mother of invention. Forget about the UFO stuff a must see for rocket buffs since they have bits of the first liquid fueled rocket and a more or less complete of the second since he reused parts of the first to build the second . They also had on display the parachute of the infamous "moon rocket". My biggest regret was not posing for a photo with the launch frame don't know if it was the original or not but pretty cool stuff .
Dude basically gatecrashed Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee review and spent the day running circles around everything else on the water. Absolute baller!
Turbinia making everything instantly obsolete at Spithead was like the booster catch but more than a century earlier. And it turns out there is still a direct connection between both events. That's why Charles Parsons is one of my heroes.
I don't know how "unsuccessful" DeLaval was in the turbine business. At least, when I was working in the asbestos litigation business a bit over a decade ago, "DeLaval Turbine" showed up moderately often in cases as the source of asbestos exposure. I understood at the time that, while they are less efficient than conventional turbines, they have some compensating advantages for manufacture and maintenance, as the housings do not have to be kept pressure tight.
DeLaval also make the "eternal" dish brush. 🙏❤💪 "The DeLaval brush lasts forever! The bristles are made of durable polyester and don't absorb water. The brush can be washed in the dishwasher or boiled - it will withstand up to 120° C. Most farmers in Scandinavia are familiar with the brush from DeLaval and have used it for years to clean their milk machines - and discovered how useful it is in the kitchen too."
Hah - saw this at the weekend in Glasgow! It was fascinating to look at something so familiar to a jet engine and yet so old as to have it's orgins in Victorian age.
Oh man, I've been into that museum...must be dozens of times. Maratime turbines are insane engineering, especially for the era. I still struggle to process how those were built that early in the industrial revolution
I've been to Ayrshire! We took a 747 to Prestwick and went golfing around Scotland. We didn't know much about the local food, but I'd always heard of a ploughman's lunch. There was a fairly large cafeteria that was crowded at lunch, and it was a chunk of cheese, a hunk of bread and 3 relishes that you had choices which 3 you wanted. This was in about 1984. We were amazed that a 747 could land at that airport since there was a large brick wall on one side of the runway and the terminal on the other. Pretty skinny for a large plane.
If you want to see some more really cool steam turbines, I recommend checking out WWII era museum ships. Not the submarines, because they are diesels (Though they are still very cool to check out), but destroyers, carriers, any of the battleships, all steam turbines, all very cool engineering.
I love this detail on the history Scott! Anyone have thoughts on how these were machined? So curious how they were able to do this by hand with precision. What material were these made from?
I must have missed that on my last visit to the Riverside Museum earlier this year. Fun fact: my grandad is part of the WW2 video that plays (or at least used to play) in the underground carriages, since he volunteered at the old transport museum at kelvinhall and then the new museum when that was built.
Yep! Center turbine engine of titanic ran off waste steam from port/starboard triple expansion four piston engines. Clever, efficient and good balance of old reliable tech and new for the time. Crazy around the engineering of handling the steam, water accumulation/separators, condensers etc…
@@scottmanley I was told that in gas turbine school in the Navy. Gas turbines will run on anything that can be made fluid enough to flow through a nozzle. Fine coal dust does this very well, but it eroded the nozzles. It also coked up the cooling air ports on the turbine blades. Also, if I remember correctly, Diesel’s first attempt at a reciprocating engine ran on coal dust, but it exploded because the fuel/air ratio couldn’t be controlled.
Minor curious point on timecode 13:08 - Most utility gas turbines (technically, gas generators with a power turbine) have two turbines for generating power (in addition to the turbines that drive the compressor in the "jet engine" gas generator): one that captures the kinetic energy of the "jet exhaust" (basically 1/3 of the chemical energy of the fuel is captured here, at max efficiency) and a heat exchanger plus steam turbine to capture the usable heat of the now not-energetic-enough exhaust (about 1/3 of the chem energy of fuel; the remaining 1/3 is for the turbine driving the compressor - approximate numbers, obviously). Because they combine the jet (Brayton) and the steam (Rankine) thermodynamic cycles, they are called "combined cycle gas turbines," or CCGTs. California relies on these to ramp up power generation several times a day, because of intermittency of renewables and the big swings in demand. Just FYI.
Hey Scott, I saw you at Maker Fair over the weekend. You know what else I saw at Maker Fair, at Mare Island Naval Shipyard? A plaque on the side of one of the old buildings that said “Mare Island Naval Shipyard Power Plant Shop” and depicted on the plaque was…. An Aeolipile! Hey, full circle.
This is why science is so cool - an advancement in one seemingly unrelated area can prove to be key to an entirely different field. Also, I wonder if there's any distant relation to Jack Parsons.
Fascinating Video Scott ! Your visit to the museum reminds me of my visit to the old Glasgow transport museum to see the Apollo 10 command module and a (very) small piece of moonrock from Apollo 12 (I think). It was strange to see (for its time) advanced technology in capsule form surrounded by Glasgow Corporation double decker buses and trams ! Never forgot it though.....
It's not a surprise to me that they could work that precise by that time, first lathe that could work up to a tenth of a milimeter and even smaller was Henry Maudslay's lathe, developed around 1800. Same counts for the milling machine, Eli Whitney 1818 12:30
I live close to deLaval. I run a machine shop that I took over after my father. We used to make parts for Alfa Laval separators. My very first time running the CNC lathe was making a large stainless steel separator cylinder with intricate geometries and tolerances. Not your typical first job... I was so nervous that I demanded to make a spare in case I mess up the first one in the later operations. Somehow managed to get it done and still keep the spare as a display piece. Not sure what to do with it, perhaps it can serve as a table stand, some beer brewing apparatus... or part of a makeshift separator.
Much of the efficiency of steam turbines comes from the condenser, which operates at near vacuum, creating a larger differential pressure and extracting meaningful work from the Low Pressure stage as well as enabling feed water recirculation. Superheated steam from multi-drum boilers provides incredibly power dense installations I worked at Devonport Dockyard from the mid 70's and did a couple of jobs on a visiting US vessel that operated a 900 psi steam plant!! Very fast but problematical without proper maintenance.
I would enjoy a deep dive on how such things were made with the technology of the time; no CADCAM and 5 axis CNC milling. That was even before Jo blocks (gauge blocks) became popular; gauges were made individually to their required size.
I'm amazed that in the era when my great grandfather came across to become a bachelor Norwegian farmer, that a device was invented which developed into the powerhouse for the fastest commonplace public transportation system. If only they had had the materials science worked out, imagine what advancements they could have made.
I think NASA engineers learn to tie knots the same way they've been done for centuries because, in some cases, they are better for securing probe equipment than screws or something like that.
In telecom it's usually a wax-coated polyester cord that's used. Easily available on the internet. Not sure what they use in aerospace industry. I'm guessing some high-performance aramid fiber... (e.g. Nomex, Kevlar), etc. but could be simple polyester. The reason 'tying' cables is done on spacecraft is it provides them with a secure mounting point that is flexible through liftoff (max vibration). Cable-ties are bad because they become brittle over time and are rigid - causing excessive stress on the wire & jacketing. There is definitely an art and a science to doing this, and imagine the experts have several key sections of ABoK memorized.
I adore hearing about the history of mechanical advancement like this! Thank you for bringing the Turbinia and its silly debut to my attention. Also the new outro theme is lovely, what is it?
You can see the thought process, from the traditional reciprocating engine to the 4 cylinder opposed engine to the turbine. Instead of discrete energy pulses converted to rotation, let's get continuous energy from rotation.
DeLaval Lube oil separators are still in use on US Navy ships. I enjoyed working on Sharples units more; but alas, my ship had none, not being a submarine.
I believe the Titanic center screw was powered by a steam turbine fed from the output steam from the left and right screw steam piston engines. Sounds like it was mature tech by that time.
Gustaf de Laval dies at the age of 67. During his lifetime, he acquires 92 Swedish patents and establishes 37 companies. His memorial is engraved with the inscription: “The Man of High Speed”.
