On 09/10/2010 02:17, Elko T wrote:   
   > Alan Dicey wrote:   
   >> On 08/10/2010 16:09, Joseph DeMartino wrote:   
   >>> On Oct 7, 11:26 pm, Jeffrey Kaplan wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> Plus, his talk about how this might be used by solar generators is   
   >>>> babble. That is exactly how power plants work using fossil or   
   >>>> nuclear fuels: Burn the fuel to create heat which boils water which   
   >>>> creates steam which turns turbine blades that generate electricity.<   
   >>>   
   >>> Or the screws of a ship or submarine. I've won many a bar bet against   
   >>> guys who didn't believe that a modern supercarrier or balistic missle   
   >>> submarine is propelled by a steam engine that differs little in its   
   >>> basic design from the ones that powered 19th century locmotives or the   
   >>> *Titanic*.   
   >>   
   >> Then you were stretching a point. Modern steamships (nuclear powered)   
   >> use steam turbines to turn the propellors. The Titanic and all bar a   
   >> handful of steam railway locomotives used reciprocating pistons, a   
   >> very different type of engine.   
   >   
   > Interesting. At first I thought you were wrong, but upon checking   
   > discovered that the Titanic did indeed use primarily piston engines, and   
   > the turbine was secondary. Apparently, her builders were not yet quite   
   > adept at using turbines, unlike other builders at the time.   
   >   
      
   Titanic, a 20th-century steamship, used triple-expansion steam piston    
   engines as it's main source of propulsion power.  After all, it was only    
   in 1897 that Parson's "Turbinia" had shaken the Admiralty by racing    
   unstoppably through the lines of battleships at the Spithead review, in    
   front of Queen Victoria.   
      
   No 19th-century steam locomotives were ever built with turbines    
   (obvious, seeing as how Parsons had pioneered their use, in ships, in    
   1894), and only a handful were ever built in the 20th century.  Doug    
   Self's excellent Museum of Retro Technology has a section detailing all    
   the turbine locomotives.   
      
   http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/whyturbn/whyturbn.htm   
      
   A total of twelve units, of eight different designs.   
   --- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32   
    * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)