Lester Allan Pelton
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Lester Allan Pelton
Lester Allan Pelton (September 5, 1829 – March 14, 1908) was an American inventor who contributed significantly to the development of hydroelectricity and hydropower in the American Old West as well as world-wide. In the late 1870s, he invented the '' Pelton water wheel'', at that time the most efficient design of the impulse water turbine. Recognized as one of the fathers of hydroelectric power, he was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal during his lifetime and is an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Early life Lester A. Pelton was born in a log-cabin in rural Vermilion Twp., Erie County, Ohio.Genealogy of the Pelton Family in America; 1892, by J.M. Pelton His grandfather, Captain Josiah Pelton, who lost most of his assets as a sea-captain during the War-of-1812 era, shortly later brought his family to Ohio. Lester's father was Allen Pelton, and his mother was Fanny Cuddeback, from another local early pioneer family. As a youngster, Lester worked on his family's ...
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Vermillion, Ohio
Vermilion is a city in Erie County, Ohio, Erie and Lorain County, Ohio, Lorain counties in the U.S. state of Ohio, on Lake Erie. The population was 10,659 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. Located about 35 miles west of Cleveland and 17 miles east of Sandusky, Ohio, Sandusky, it is part of the Greater Cleveland, Cleveland metropolitan area and Sandusky metropolitan area, Sandusky micropolitan area. History Vermilion was initially settled in the early 19th century and incorporated as a village in 1837. The city took its name from the nearby Vermilion River (Ohio), Vermilion River. It developed as a fishing and small-boat harbor. In 1847, the Congress of the United States built the Vermilion Lighthouse to aid navigation on Lake Erie. As commerce grew in larger nearby cities, the Vermilion River proved inadequate to large commercial traffic. Later, recreational boating became very popular. During the early 20th century, the area became known as a resort community, fe ...
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Yuba River
The Yuba River is a tributary of the Feather River in the Sierra Nevada and eastern Sacramento Valley, in the U.S. state of California. The main stem of the river is about long, and its headwaters are split into three major forks. The Yuba River proper is formed at the North Yuba and Middle Yuba rivers' confluence, with the South Yuba joining a short distance downstream. Measured to the head of the North Yuba River, the Yuba River is just over long. The river drains , mostly in the western slope and foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The average runoff of the Yuba River basin is approximately per year, providing about one-third of the flow of the Feather River, and 10 percent of the flow of the Sacramento River, which the Feather ultimately drains into. Since the early 20th century, irrigation and hydropower diversion projects have gradually reduced the river's flow. The river's name comes from the local tribe, the Nisenan, word for "waterway," 'uba seo. It is spelled in e ...
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Nevada City, California
Nevada City (originally, ''Ustumah'', a Nisenan village; later, Nevada, Deer Creek Dry Diggins, and Caldwell's Upper Store) is the county seat of Nevada County, California, United States, northeast of Sacramento, southwest of Reno and northeast of San Francisco. The population was 3,068 as of the 2010 Census. History European-Americans first settled Nevada City in 1849, during the California Gold Rush, as Nevada ( Spanish for "snow-covered", a reference to the snow-topped mountains in the area). The ''Gold Tunnel'' on the north side of Deer Creek was the city's first mine, built in 1850. The first sawmill in Nevada City was built on Deer Creek, just above town, in August 1850, by Lewis & Son, with a water wheel. In 1850–51, Nevada City was the state's most important mining town, and Nevada County the state's leading gold-mining county. In 1851, '' The Nevada Journal'' became the first newspaper published in the town and county. The first cemetery in town, the Pioneer Ceme ...
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Miners Foundry
The Miners Foundry (previously Nevada Foundry; Nevada Iron Foundry and Machine Shop, George Allan's Foundry and Machine Works, American Victorian Museum, Miners Foundry and Supply Company; currently Miners Foundry Cultural Center) is located at 325 Spring Street, Nevada City, California, USA. Built in Nevada County in 1856, it is a California Historical Landmark as, in 1879, the foundry became the first manufacturing site of the Pelton wheel. History Edward Coker started the Nevada Iron Foundry and Machine Shop in 1855. The ironworks foundry and blacksmith shop was situated in a rented building on Spring Street behind the National Exchange Hotel. The Nevada Foundry was built to serve the needs of loggers and California Gold Rush miners who were working mines in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Nevada City's fire of July 1856 destroyed the small foundry operated by Coker. Afterwards, he acquired a new site on the corner of Bridge and Spring streets and began construction on a ...
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Velocity
Velocity is the directional speed of an object in motion as an indication of its rate of change in position as observed from a particular frame of reference and as measured by a particular standard of time (e.g. northbound). Velocity is a fundamental concept in kinematics, the branch of classical mechanics that describes the motion of bodies. Velocity is a physical vector quantity; both magnitude and direction are needed to define it. The scalar absolute value (magnitude) of velocity is called , being a coherent derived unit whose quantity is measured in the SI (metric system) as metres per second (m/s or m⋅s−1). For example, "5 metres per second" is a scalar, whereas "5 metres per second east" is a vector. If there is a change in speed, direction or both, then the object is said to be undergoing an ''acceleration''. Constant velocity vs acceleration To have a ''constant velocity'', an object must have a constant speed in a constant direction. Constant directi ...
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Kinetic Energy
In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless its speed changes. The same amount of work is done by the body when decelerating from its current speed to a state of rest. Formally, a kinetic energy is any term in a system's Lagrangian which includes a derivative with respect to time. In classical mechanics, the kinetic energy of a non-rotating object of mass ''m'' traveling at a speed ''v'' is \fracmv^2. In relativistic mechanics, this is a good approximation only when ''v'' is much less than the speed of light. The standard unit of kinetic energy is the joule, while the English unit of kinetic energy is the foot-pound. History and etymology The adjective ''kinetic'' has its roots in the Greek word κίνησις ''kines ...
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Head (hydraulic)
Hydraulic head or piezometric head is a specific measurement of liquid pressure above a vertical datum., 410 pages. See pp. 43–44., 650 pages. See p. 22. It is usually measured as a liquid surface elevation, expressed in units of length, at the entrance (or bottom) of a piezometer. In an aquifer, it can be calculated from the depth to water in a piezometric well (a specialized water well), and given information of the piezometer's elevation and screen depth. Hydraulic head can similarly be measured in a column of water using a standpipe piezometer by measuring the height of the water surface in the tube relative to a common datum. The hydraulic head can be used to determine a ''hydraulic gradient'' between two or more points. "Head" in fluid dynamics In fluid dynamics, ''head'' is a concept that relates the energy in an incompressible fluid to the height of an equivalent static column of that fluid. From Bernoulli's principle, the total energy at a given point in a flu ...
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Sutter Creek, California
Sutter Creek (formerly spelled Sutter's Creek and Suttercreek; formerly named Suttersville) is a city in Amador County, California, United States. The population was 2,501 at the 2010 census, up from 2,303 at the 2000 census. It is accessible via State Route 49. History The community takes its name from nearby Sutter Creek, which in turn has the name of early California developer John Sutter. Sutter's discovery of gold at nearby Coloma in January 1848 triggered the California Gold Rush. After all his workers left him to go on their own hunts for gold, Sutter moved to Mormon Island with a couple of hands. After about two weeks miners flooded the island, so Sutter and his hands left and returned to Sutter Creek. Sutter said: "I broke up the camp and started on the march further south, and located my next camp on Sutter Creek, now in Amador County, and thought that I should be there alone. The work was going on well for a while, until three or four traveling grog-shops surrou ...
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Knight Foundry
Knight Foundry, also known as Knight's Foundry and Shops, is a cast iron foundry and machine shop in Sutter Creek, California. It was established in 1873 to supply heavy equipment and repair facilities to the gold mines and timber industry of the Mother Lode. Samuel N. Knight developed a high speed, cast iron impulse water turbine which was a forerunner of the Pelton wheel design. Knight Wheels were used in some of the first hydroelectric plants in California, Utah, and Oregon. This site is the last water-powered foundry and machine shop in the United States. A Knight Wheel drives the main line shaft, with smaller water motors powering other machines. History Samuel Knight came west to California from Maine in 1863. His Knight Wheel was the first kind of water turbine where a high-pressure nozzle from which the water originated was aimed slightly off-center to the cups that caught the water, allowing the energy created by water's splashing not to be wasted. By the 1890s, mo ...
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Water Wheel
A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving car. Water wheels were still in commercial use well into the 20th century but they are no longer in common use. Uses included milling flour in gristmills, grinding wood into pulp for papermaking, hammering wrought iron, machining, ore crushing and pounding fibre for use in the manufacture of cloth. Some water wheels are fed by water from a mill pond, which is formed when a flowing stream is dammed. A channel for the water flowing to or from a water wheel is called a mill race. The race bringing water from the mill pond to the water wheel is a headrace; the one carrying water after it has left the wheel is commonly referred to as a tailrace. Waterwheels were used for various purposes from a ...
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NMAH DC - IMG 8871
The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is the original Star-Spangled Banner. The museum is part of the Smithsonian Institution and located on the National Mall at 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. History The museum opened in 1964 as the Museum of History and Technology. It was one of the last structures designed by the renowned architectural firm McKim Mead & White. In 1980, the museum was renamed the National Museum of American History to represent its mission of the collection, care, study, and interpretation of objects that reflect the experience of the American people. The museum site had previously held two temporary war buildings constructed in 1942. In May 2012, John Gray became the new director. He retired from the post in May 2018 and was ...
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Pelton Wheel (patent)
The Pelton wheel or Pelton Turbine is an impulse-type water turbine invented by American inventor Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to water's dead weight like the traditional overshot water wheel. Many earlier variations of impulse turbines existed, but they were less efficient than Pelton's design. Water leaving those wheels typically still had high speed, carrying away much of the dynamic energy brought to the wheels. Pelton's paddle geometry was designed so that when the rim ran at half the speed of the water jet, the water left the wheel with very little speed; thus his design extracted almost all of the water's impulse energywhich made for a very efficient turbine. History file:Pelton wheel (patent).png, Figure from Lester Allan Pelton's original October 1880 patent Lester Allan Pelton was born in Vermillion, Ohio in 1829. In 1850, he traveled overland to take part in the California Gold Rush. ...
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