Whatever the future may hold, however, it remains true that the first practical solution of the problem of securing direct rotary motion from the action of steam, on a really commercial scale, was solved with an apparatus very different from any of those just described, the inventor being an Englishman, Mr. C. A. Parsons, and the apparatus the steam turbine, the first model of which he constructed in 1884, and which began to attract general attention in the course of the ensuing decade. Public interest was fully aroused in 1897, when Mr. Parson's boat, the _Turbinia_, equipped with engines of this type, showed a trial speed of 32-3/4 knots per hour, a speed never hitherto attained by any other species of water craft. More recently, a torpedo boat, the _Viper_, equipped with engines developing about ten thousand horse-power, attained a speed of 35-1/2 knots. The success of these small boats led to the equipment of large vessels with the turbine, and on April first, 1905, the first transatlantic liner propelled by this form of engine steamed into the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia. This first ocean liner equipped with the turbine engine is called the _Victorian_. She is a ship five hundred and forty feet long and sixty feet wide, carrying fifteen hundred passengers. The _Victorian_ had shown a speed of 19-1/2 knots an hour on her trial trip, and it had been hoped that she would break the transatlantic record. On her first trip, however, she encountered adverse winds and seas, and did not attain great speed. Her performance was, however, considered entirely satisfactory and creditable. In the ensuing half-decade several large ships were equipped with engines of the same type, the most famous of these being the Cunard liners, _Carmania_, _Lusitania_, and _Mauretania_. The two last-named ships are sister craft, and they are the largest boats of any kind hitherto constructed. The _Lusitania_ was first launched and she entered immediately upon a record-breaking career, only to be surpassed within a few months by the _Mauretania_, which soon acquired all records for speed and endurance. Fuller details as to the performance of these vessels will be found in another place. Here we are of course concerned with the Parsons turbine engine itself rather than with its applications.