Development
Water wheels have been used historically to power mills of all types, but they are inefficient. Nineteenth-century efficiency improvements of water turbines allowed them to compete with steam engines (wherever water was available).
In 1826 Benoit Fourneyron developed a high efficiency (80%) outward-flow water turbine. Water was directed tangentially through the turbine runner, causing it to spin. Jean-Victor Poncelet designed an inward-flow turbine in about 1820 that used the same principles. S. B. Howd obtained a U.S. patent in 1838 for a similar design.
In 1848 James B. Francis, while working as head engineer of the Locks and Canals company in the water-powered factory city of Lowell, Massachusetts, improved on these designs to create a turbine with 90% efficiency. He applied scientific principles and testing methods to produce a very efficient turbine design. More importantly, his mathematical and graphical calculation methods improved turbine design and engineering. His analytical methods allowed confident design of high efficiency turbines to exactly match a site's flow conditions.
Read more about this topic: Francis Turbine
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Good schools are schools for the development of the whole child. They seek to help children develop to their maximum their social powers and their intellectual powers, their emotional capacities, their physical powers.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)