Railway and experimental steam plants were already working at pressures well above 850 psi in the 1920s, so the scenario does not require an impossible material leap. The 1929 LMS No. 6399 Fury experiment is the main precedent: its Schmidt steam-raising system used a primary circuit at roughly 1,400-1,800 psi and a 900 psi secondary circuit. A plausible development path joins John Brown and Company's boiler work with Curtis turbines, linking British manufacture to advanced turbine design. A successful plant could interest both the Royal Navy and US Navy and give the partnership a valuable lead before competitors caught up. Licensing the design could also make the project commercially attractive even if both governments restricted sales beyond their own fleets.
Notable Point · 9:22-15:19
A plausible Brown-Curtis 850 psi plant
Contemporary ultra-high-pressure experiments and John Brown's turbine work make an Anglo-American 850 psi marine plant technologically plausible by 1934.