Sir Charles Algernon Parsons
From LoveToKnow 1911
"SIR CHARLES ALGERNON PARSONS (1854-), British engineer, was born in London June 13 1854, the fourth son of the 3rd Earl of Rosse. He was educated privately and at St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating 1 r th wrangler in 1876, and being elected in later life (1904) an hon. fellow of the college. In 1877 he entered the Armstrong Works at Elswick, having previously worked as a boy in his father's workshops at Birr Castle, King's co., Ireland, where the Rosse telescope was constructed (see 2 3.745). In 1883 he served for a year on the experimental staff of Messrs. Kitson of Leeds, and in 1884 entered into partnership with Messrs. Clarke Chapman & Co. of Gateshead. The partnership was dissolved in 1889, and Charles Parsons, whose invention of the Parsons steam-turbine was bringing him into continually greater prominence in connexion with the progress of shipbuilding, then built his own works at Heaton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for the making of steam-turbines, dynamos, searchlight reflectors and other electrical apparatus (see 25.845 seq.). Besides his chairmanship of C. A. Parsons & Co., he became managing director of several electric supply companies, notably at Newcastle, Scarborough and Cambridge, and also of the Marine Steam Turbine Co. which became the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Co. of Wallsend-on-Tyne, owners of the turbine patents, with ramifications throughout the engineering world. He was elected F.R.S. in 1898, won the Royal Society's Rumford Medal in 1902, was president of the Institute of Marine Engineers 1 9 05-6 and of the British Association 1919 -20. In 1911 he was created K.C.B. During the World War Sir Charles Parsons served on many Government committees connected with scientific research, electric power, aircraft, fuel research and the construction of tanks.
