The Progress of Marine Propulsion

Abstract

NEVER since Fulton launched the Clermont or Bell built the Comet has there at any time been a fixed or standard type of machinery for all ships. Inventions, improvements, innovations have followed in rapid succession, and the history of marine engineering presents an endless and bewildering variety of engines and boilers which have been adopted one day, only to be superseded by better ones the next. With all this change and development, however, designers have never before been faced with the problem of choosing between so many rival methods of driving ships as they have to-day, each method of propulsion making by its performance or promise some claim to consideration. Modern marine engineering embraces in its scope not only steam boilers and steam engines, but also steam turbines, oil engines of various types, and also the use of electricity on an extensive scale.