Charles Algernon Parsons develops a turbine engine in Newcastle in 1884 and immediately utilizes the new engine to drive an electrical generator, which he also designs.

Parsons' steam turbine makes cheap and plentiful electricity possible and revolutionizes marine transport and naval warfare—the world will never be the same again.

Born in London, he was the youngest son of the famous astronomer William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse.

He and his elder brother the Hon. Richard Clare Parsons had constructed a steam car that in 1869 was the cause of the first recorded fatal traffic accident involving a powered car.

His cousin Mary Ward had fallen from the car and suffered a broken neck.

Parsons had attended Trinity College, Dublin and St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating from the latter in 1877 with a first-class honors degree in mathematics.

He then joined the Newcastle-based engineering firm of W.G. Armstrong as an apprentice, an unusual step for the son of an earl; then moved to Kitsons in Yorkshire where he worked on rocket-powered torpedoes; and then in 1884 moved to Clarke, Chapman and Co., ship engine manufacturers near Newcastle, where he is head of their electrical equipment development.