Turbulence from 1870 to 1920: The birth of a noun and of a concept

We consider here the works of French, British, and German researchers in fluid mechanics from 1870 to the beginning of the twentieth century. Our aim is to understand how the term “turbulence” introduced by William Thomson in 1887, which was not used by the main researchers of the time, including Joseph Boussinesq, Osborne Reynolds, Lord Rayleigh, Horace Lamb in the first editions of his book, became classical in the 1920s. We trace the first introductions of the terms “turbulence”, “turbulent flow” in the works of relatively unknown researchers between 1889 and 1903, until it reaches the vocabulary of mainstream researchers in fluid mechanics and physics. Our result is that the shift was in 1906–1908, when the term was used in the 1906 edition of the book of Horace Lamb, and in Lanchester's book, followed by a series of papers of German researchers before the First World War.The use of the word “turbulence”, a word used for a long time for crowds or for children, in a scientific context, corresponds to the introduction of a new concept, a new understanding of a scientific phenomenon clearly identified as being different from laminar motion. The study of the use of this term is also the study of the diffusion of a new concept among researchers of the time.