ABSTRACT
Through the design experience developed for steam turbines and available to gas turbines, it is not surprising that gas generator compressors, turbines, and power-extraction turbines bear a striking resemblance to each other and to the steam turbine. In 1903, Rene Armengaud and Charles Lemale built and successfully tested a gas turbine using a Rateau rotary compressor and a Curtis velocity compounded steam turbine. Later Brown Boveri and Co. went on to build a 500 horsepower gas turbine with a three-stage centrifugal compressor, each stage having 25 impellers in series. As Norman Davy stated in 1914, "The theory of the gas turbine was as fully grasped by Barber at the end of the eighteenth century, and by Bresson in the beginning of the nineteenth century, as it is by experts today. The success of the gas turbine as a heat engine rest solely upon practical limitations.".
