In England, about five years before the Arrow’s achievement, a little torpedo-boat, scarcely bigger than a launch, set the whole world talking by travelling at the rate of thirty-nine and three-fourths miles an hour.  The little craft seemed to disappear in the white smother of her wake, and those who watched the speed trial marvelled at the railroad speed she made.  The Turbina—­for that was the little record-breaker’s name—­was propelled by a new kind of engine, and her speed was all the more remarkable on that account.  C.A.  Parsons, the inventor of the engine, worked out the idea that inventors have been studying for a long time—­since 1629, in fact—­that is, the rotary principle, or the rolling movement without the up-and-down driving mechanism of the piston.

The Turbina was driven by a number of steam-turbines that worked a good deal like the water-turbines that use the power of Niagara.  Just as a water-wheel is driven by the weight or force of the water striking the blades or paddles of the wheel, so the force of the many jets of steam striking against the little wings makes the wheels of the steam-turbines revolve.  If you take a card that has been cut to a circular shape and cut the edges so that little wings will be made, then blow on this winged edge, the card will revolve with a buzz; the Parsons steam-turbine works in the same way.  A shaft bearing a number of steel disks or wheels, each having many wings set at an angle like the blades of a propeller, is enclosed by a drumlike casing.  The disks at one end of the shaft are smaller than those at the other; the steam enters at the small end in a circle of jets that blow against the wings and set them and the whole shaft whirling.  After passing the first disk and its little vanes, the steam goes through the holes of an intervening fixed partition that deflects it so that it blows afresh on the second, and so on to the third and fourth, blowing upon a succession of wheels, each set larger than the preceding one.  Each of Parsons’s steam-turbine engines is a series of turbines put in a steel casing, so that they use every ounce of the expansive power of the steam.

It will be noticed that the little wind-turbine that you blow with your breath spins very rapidly; so, too, do the wheels spun by the steamy breath of the boilers, and Mr. Parsons found that the propeller fastened to the shaft of his engine revolved so fast that a vacuum was formed around the blades, and its work was not half done.  So he lengthened his shaft and put three propellers on it, reducing the speed, and allowing all of the blades to catch the water strongly.

The Turbina, speeding like an express train, glided like a ghost over the water; the smoke poured from her stack and the cleft wave foamed at her prow, but there was little else to remind her inventor that 2,300 horse-power was being expended to drive her.  There was no jar, no shock, no thumping of cylinders and pounding of rapidly revolving cranks; the motion of the engine was rotary, and the propeller shafts, spinning at 2,000 revolutions per minute, made no more vibration than a windmill whirling in the breeze.