Laval, Carl Gustaf Patrik de (1845-1913)

Swedish engineer who made a pioneering contribution to the development of high-speed steam turbines. He invented the special reduction gearing that allows a turbine rotating at high speed to drive a propeller or machine at comparatively slow speed, a principle having universal application in marine engineering. De Laval was born in Orsa, Dalarna, and educated at the Stockholm Technical Institute and Uppsala University. In 1887, de Laval developed a small, high-speed turbine with a speed of 42,000 revolutions per minute. He is credited with being the first to use a convergent-divergent type of nozzle in a steam turbine in order to realize the full potential energy of the expanding steam in a single-stage machine, completed 1890. He also invented various devices for the dairy industry, including a high-speed centrifugal cream separator 1878 and a vacuum milking machine, perfected 1913. De Laval's other interests ranged from electric lighting to electrometallurgy in aerodynamics. In the 1890s he employed more than 100 engineers in developing his devices and inventions, which are exactly described in the 1,000 or more diaries he kept.