governor
1. the ruler or chief magistrate of a colony, province, etc.
2. the representative of the Crown in a British colony
3. Brit the senior administrator or head of a society, prison, etc.
4. the chief executive of any state in the US
5. Engineering a device that controls the speed of an engine, esp by regulating the supply of fuel, etc., either to limit the maximum speed or to maintain a constant speed
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
governor
[′gəv·ə·nər] (mechanical engineering)
A device, especially one actuated by the centrifugal force of whirling weights opposed by gravity or by springs, used to provide automatic control of speed or power of a prime mover.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
governor
A type of control to ensure that certain types of equipment, like high-pressure fuel pumps, operate at the desired speed. A governor has a sensor to measure the speed, a datum from which the equipment speed is referenced, and a control to adjust the speed to align it with the datum. See
overspeed governor.
An Illustrated Dictionary of Aviation Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Governor
(1) In present-day bourgeois states, the highest official in a territorial unit. For example, in the USA a governor is the executive head of a state, popularly elected from among candidates nominated by the leading bourgeois parties. In Denmark each of the 25 districts is headed by a governor appointed by the king. In Great Britain a governor is an official appointed by the British government to administer a colony.
(2) In prerevolutionary Russia, the highest government official in a province, who performed administrative, police, and military functions.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.