Armengaud-Lemale gas turbine
The Armengaud-Lemale gas turbine was an early experimental engine built in 1906 in Saint-Denis, Paris, by the Société Anonyme des Turbomoteurs. It was named after the society’s founders, Rene Armengaud and Charles Lemale. Lemale had patented a gas turbine in 1901, and the society, formed in 1903, explored new ideas such as hollow turbine blades and compressor intercooling.
In 1904 a small proof-of-concept unit used air from a centrifugal compressor at about 71 psi, with a kerosene-fueled combustion chamber ignited by a hot wire and cooled by water spray. The resulting hot gas expanded through a nozzle to drive a modified 6-inch (152 mm) De Laval turbine wheels at around 20,000 rpm.
In 1906 the large machine consisted of three compressor casings with 25 centrifugal impellers. The compressors were designed by Auguste Rateau and built by Brown, Boveri & Cie (BB&C) in Switzerland, marking BB&C’s first centrifugal compressors. To keep turbine wheels from overheating, water was injected into the combustion chamber, and temperatures were kept below about 470 C (878 F). Despite powering its own air compressors, the machine was not efficient enough to be a practical power source.
Experts later estimated that even with reasonable component efficiencies, achieving 5% overall efficiency would require a combustion temperature around 1500 F (816 C), which was not attainable at that time. After this project, BB&C developed industrial centrifugal compressors and eventually built the world’s first gas turbine power station in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1939.
The Armengaud-Lemale turbine was the last large turbine built by the society, which stopped turbine work after Armengaud died in 1909. The combustion chamber design, licensed by the society, found success in naval torpedoes, where kerosene was burned in compressed air and cooled with seawater. Test data from the society report a run at an ambient temperature of 18 C.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 04:16 (CET).