Notes: 1. Mr. Horsley Hall, a former employee, stated:
I started work as an office boy at C.A. Parsons January 1930 and remember quite well the company ‘Roll of Honour’, with names of those men killed in the Great War headed by the name of Sir Charles Algernon George Parsons, a major in the Royal Artillery killed in action April 1918 aged 32. This was situated on the outside wall near the door of a passage that led from the factory yard to the main offices corridor.
2. The son was, in fact, Algernon George Parsons, Major, R.F.A., his father was Sir Charles Parsons.
3. This was the Heaton Works of Charles A. Parsons, which were built in 1889 for the development and manufacture of steam turbines and high-speed electrical plant. At that time the works covered about two acres and consisted of a single workshop with small pattern shop, smithy, test house and office, manned by 48 staff. With a rising demand for turbo-generators, the works were soon enlarged. In 1894 Parsons established a separate organisation later to be known as The Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Co. Ltd. To apply the turbine to ship propulsion. Parsons built the first turbine-propelled ship “Turbinia”. There was a public demonstration of the ship at the Naval Review at Spithead in June 1897 for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Turbine propulsion was soon fully accepted by the admiralty and the steam turbine was adopted for all large power stations. Sir Charles Parsons died in 1931. By this time the Heaton Works had expanded to an area of 25 acres and employed 1800 people. By 1964 the company employed 8000 people.
4. CA Parsons and Company were founded in 1889 to develop Charles Parson’s invention, the steam turbine. The majority of the collection relates to the period prior to their merger with Reyrolle in 1968, creating Reyrolle-Parsons group. One item is from the era of Parsons Power Generation Systems section of Rolls-Royce (in 1979 the company merged with Clarke-Chapman, forming Northern Engineering Industries, Rolls bought this in 1989; in 1997 Siemens AG acquired the section, forming Siemens Power Generation).
