Historedia
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First Operational Pelton Wheel

When
1878
Where
Mayflower Mine, Nevada City
Part of
Lester Allan Pelton produces the first operational Pelton wheel

Pelton installed the first operational Pelton wheel at the Mayflower Mine in Nevada City in 1878, achieving 90 percent efficiency.

The first Pelton Wheel was installed at the Mayflower Mine in Nevada City in 1878. This installation demonstrated the practical application of Pelton's impulse turbine design, which achieved 90 percent efficiency in converting streamflow kinetic energy to horsepower, significantly outperforming competitors.

Sources

  1. Pelton wheel Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-28
  2. Lester Allan Pelton Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-12

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.