Arizona republican., 1899-12-05
ADVANTAGE OF SPEED
Her Tonnage Is @ Third Less Than That of Other Torpedo Boat De- stroyers of the Same Dimensions and She Has Twice the Horse Power of the Ordinary Thirty Knot Vessels.


 unpretentious looking craft which within the last few days has won the distinction of being the fastest steam ship ever constructed. She is a naval vessel, her majestys torpedo boat de- sons Marine Steam Turbine company, of which the Hon. Charles A. Parsons, the originator of the turbine engines, is managing director. She has fulfilled the expectations of Mr. Parsons and the experts of the British admiralty office and will bring about an impor- tant change in the construction of tor pedo boat destroyers. Therefore the interest of naval men in all parts of the world is centered upon the boat.
 The Viper is the first vessel of any practical importance to be built on the turbine principle. It is true that the Turbinia was hardly more than toy boat. She was built as an experiment, to prove the feasibility of the turbine for marine propulsion. What Mr. Par sons learned from the Turbinia he has embodied in practical form in theViper.
 In external appearance the new boat does not differ greatly from others of her class now in use. Her four short wide tunnels suggest tremendous draught across her fire grates. Her  yacht. She has a turtle-back protect i've deck forward, where the wash of the waves will come when she strikes a forty mile gait. Otherwise she does not differ from her sister ships Of less speed. Her length is 21O feet, her beam twenty feet and her draught between five and six feet-the latter an evidence cf the extreme lightness of her work ing machinery. Her displacement in fact is only 925 tons.
 In interior arrangement. however, the Viper is very different from the or dinary vessel of her class. Her boilers are much larger, her engines and shaft iaz much smaller and the whole work ing mechanism Of the boat seems much more simple than that of the ordinary steam vessel.
 To understand the operation of the new vessel it will be necessary to ex- plain briefly the turbine engine on which her claims to superiority rest. In ordinary engines of the reciprocat- ing type, such as are used generally in steamships. the steam passes from the boilers through cylinders of high and low pressure, and thence is applied to the shafts which drive the vessel by means of pistons. Tn applying the pow CT the motion is changed from the yer tical movement of the piston head to the revolving movement of the shafts. The same thing may be observed any day by watching the piston rod that drives the wheels Of a locomotive
 By this method of applying the power the piston changes it's direction with every revolution of the machinery it drives, and this continual change of di- rectiOn with every stroke of the engines causes the vibration which is always present in this method of driving ma chinery.
 In the turbine engine, which MT. Par sons has perfected after fifteen years of experimental work, the steam is ap- piled directly to the shafts which it drives. There are no cylinders and no pistons. The only gear used is carried by the shaft itself and by the chest which incloses it.
 This gear consists simply of hundreds Of small steel blades projecting from the shaft inside the chest and fixed at such an angle that the steam as it en- ters the chest eXerts it's power against them and turns the shaft. Similar blades are fixed to the inner walls of the chest in a stationary position. These are interDOsed between the rows of revolving blades and slant in the opposite direction in order to turn the full force of the steam directly uDon the latter. The steam passing through the chest strikes the face of the hun dreds of little blades and turns the shaft. The action is the same as that of water in driving a turbine water wheel. The device seems simplicity it. self, although it has taken fifteen years Of experimental work on the part of NIr. Parsons to bring about it's success ful application to steam propulsion
 It is easy to see that by applying the steam in this manner so that the motion is steadily in one direction a much higher rate of speed is possible than could be obtained even with the best appliances under the reciprocating system. Tn fact, the only limit of speed is the amount of steam power that can be applied. The Turbinia's screws were run at 2,500 revolutions per minute. which is ten times the rate attained in vessels Of the ordinary type.
 Another advantage of the turbine