One capital advantage of the turbine is that it keeps the cylinder walls at a more uniform temperature than is possible even with a compound engine of the old type. Another advantage is that the power of the turbine is applied directly to cause rotation of the shaft, whereas no satisfactory means has ever been discovered hitherto of making the action of the steam engine rotary, except with the somewhat disadvantageous crank-shaft. This fact of adjustment of the turbine blades to the revolving shaft seems to make this form of engine particularly adapted to use in steamships. It is also highly adapted to revolving the shaft of a dynamo, and has been largely applied to this use. Needless to say, however, it may be applied to any other form of machinery. It would be difficult at the present stage of its development to predict the extent to which the turbine will ultimately supersede the old type of engine. Its progress has already been extraordinary, however, as an engineer pointed out in the London _Times_ of August 14, 1907, in the following words: "When the steam turbine was introduced by Mr. Parsons some 25 years ago, in the form of a little model, which is now in the South Kensington Museum, and the rotor of which may easily be held stationary by the hand against the full blast of the steam, who would have been rash enough to predict, except perhaps the far-seeing inventor himself, that a vessel 760 feet long, loaded to 37,000 tons displacement, drawing 32 ft. 9 in. of water, and providing accommodation for 2,500 people, could be propelled at a speed of 24.5 knots per hour, which it is hoped she may maintain over the 3,000 miles of the Atlantic voyage? "From this small model, which will in time become as historic as the _Rocket_ of Stephenson, and which is only some few inches in diameter, the turbine has been developed gradually in size. The cylindrical casings which take the place of the complicated machinery of the piston engine in the engine room of the _Lusitania_ contain drums, which in the high-pressure turbines are 8 feet in diameter and in the low-pressure 11 ft. 8 in., and from which thousands of curved blades project, the longest of which are 22 inches, and against which the steam impinges in its course from the boiler to the condenser. "Not only has the steam turbine justified the confidence of those who have labored so successfully in its development, but no other great invention has proceeded from the laboratory stage to such an important position in the engineering world in such a short space of time. This would not have happened if some inherent drawback, such as lack of economy in steam consumption, existed, and as the turbine has been proved to be, for land purposes, very economical, there seems to be no reason to doubt that marine turbines, working as they do at full load almost continually, will show likewise that the coal bill is not increased, but perhaps diminished by their use.