C. A. Parsons and Company

C. A. Parsons and Company was a British engineering firm which was once one of the largest employers on Tyneside. The company became Reyrolle Parsons in 1968, merged with Clarke Chapman to form Northern Engineering Industries in 1977, and became part of Rolls-Royce plc in 1989. Today the company is part of Siemens Energy.
History.
The Company was founded by Charles Algernon Parsons in 1889 to produce steam turbines, his own invention. At the beginning of the 20th century, the company was producing up to 50 turbines a year at its factory in Heaton in Newcastle upon Tyne. 
During the First World War, the Parsons’ Works on Shields Road during the First World War employed a large number of women on the factory floor.
The company’s heyday was in the 1960s, when the factory employed more than 7,000 people at its site.
Nuclear power stations using Parsons steam turbines include Bradwell, Calder Hall, Dungeness, Heysham 2 and Oldbury in England and Chapelcross and Hunterston in Scotland.
The company merged with A. Reyrolle & Company to form Reyrolle Parsons in 1968. In 1977 Reyrolle Parsons merged with Clarke Chapman to form Northern Engineering Industries, which itself was acquired by Rolls-Royce plc in 1989.
The company survives today as part of Siemens Energy after [Siemens]] acquired the business from Rolls-Royce in 1997. In the 2000s the operations at the Heaton works were severely cut to focus mainly on the servicing side of the business, concentrating manufacturing operations at the company’s factories in Mülheim and Budapest.
Parsons turbines are on display in several museums in the UK, and across the world. These include the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, the Science Museum in London, and the Electric Power and Historical Museum, in Yokohama, Japan.
Parsons also patented and made novel searchlight mirrors between 1894 and 1923.