The article explains why many years have passed from the development of efficient steam turbines until the development of efficient gas turbines, due to the differences between the Rankine Cycle and the Brayton cycle.
Even if the Americans like to name the Joule cycle as the Brayton cycle, the American name does not have any justification.
While George B. Brayton has patented his engine in 1872, James Prescott Joule has published already in 1851, 21 years earlier, a scientific paper (“On the Air-Engine”) describing what is named now as the Joule cycle, a.k.a. the Brayton cycle.
While the Brayton patent contained very little information, the paper published by Joule was very important and it described in great detail how to design an engine using this thermodynamic cycle and why this is useful.
Moreover, in 1859, 13 years before Brayton, William John Macquorn Rankine has published a very influential manual (“A Manual of the Steam Engine and other Prime Movers”), where all the thermodynamic cycles used in engines known at that time were classified, and he already referred to this cycle as Joule’s cycle.
Therefore there is no doubt about the priority of the term "Joule cycle" over "Brayton cycle".
An interesting fact that is usually not mentioned in most manuals is that at equal maximum temperature and maximum pressure (which are typically limited by the materials used for the engine), the Joule cycle is more efficient than either the Atkinson cycle or the Otto cycle, so the fact that it is the easiest thermodynamic cycle to approximate in a gas turbine is favorable for its efficiency.