Comment by JumpCrisscross

“Within Parsons' lifetime, the generating capacity of a [steam turbine] unit was scaled up by about 10,000 times” [1].

For comparison, Moore’s law (at 2 years per doubling) scales 4 orders of magnitude in about 27 years. That’s roughly the lifetime of a modern steam turbine [2]. In actuality, Parsons lived 77 years [3], implying a 13% growth rate, so doubling every 6 versus 2 years. But within the same order of magnitude.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine

[2] https://alliedpg.com/latest-articles/life-extension-strategi... 30 years

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Algernon_Parsons