James Bicheno Francis was a British-American civil engineer, who invented the Francis turbine.
James Bicheno Francis, British-American hydraulic engineer and inventor of the mixed-flow, or Francis, turbine (a combination of the radial- and axial-flow turbines) that was used for low-pressure installations.
James Francis was born in South Leigh, near Witney, Oxfordshire in England, United Kingdom. He started his engineering career at the early age of 7 as he worked as his father’s apprentice at the Porth Cawl Railway and Harbor Works in South Wales. When he turned 18, he decided to emigrate to the United States, in 1833. His first job was in Stonington, Connecticut as an assistant to the railway engineer George Washington Whistler Jr., working on the New York and New Haven Railroad. A year later, James and his boss, Whistler, travelled north to Lowell, Massachusetts, where at the age of 19, he got a draftsman job with the Locks and Canal Company, and Whistler became chief engineer.
At the age 22 became chief engineer of the company, when Whistler resigned. In his 40 years of managing the company’s waterpower interests and acting as a consulting waterpower engineer to factories, he contributed greatly to the rise of Lowell as an industrial centre. He also investigated timber preservation, the testing and design of cast-iron girders, and fire protection systems. In addition to the Francis turbine, he is known for his formulas for the flow of water over weirs and many other hydraulic studies. Francis wrote more than 200 technical papers and, although unschooled, was considered one of the foremost civil engineers of his time.