the first hydroelectric power in the Sierra Nevada. In 1895, the largest installation of Pelton's wheel during his lifetime was accomplished at the North Star Mine Powerhouse, Grass Valley, California, by the engineer Arthur De Wint Foote, who designed and installed an over-sized wheel of 30 feet diameter; it performed successfully, greatly increasing the hydropower delivered by the Pelton runners to produce compressed air for mining operations. Pelton patented his wheel as well as his novel design of the double cup runner, and in 1888 formed the Pelton Water Wheel Company in San Francisco to supply the growing demand for hydropower and hydroelectricity throughout the West and world-wide. 'Pelton' is a trademark name for the products of that company, but the term is widely used generically for similar impulse turbines. Death, legacy and awards Pelton died in California at the age of seventy-eight and is interred at his family cemetery site in Vermilion, Ohio. His Pelton Runner design is still used to produce hydroelectric power in the United States and around the world, as shown here. Later designs such as the Turgo turbine, first patented in 1919, and the Banki turbine were inspired by the Pelton wheel. In 1895, The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded Lester Pelton the Elliott Cresson Medal, since renamed the Benjamin Franklin Medal, for Pelton's accomplishments of invention in technology. In 2006, he was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandra, Virginia, formerly in Akron, Ohio. There are memorials and monuments celebrating Pelton and the Pelton Runner mounted in Camptonvlle, California, in the Miners Foundry in Nevada City, California, and at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., California Resort at Disneyland in Anaheim, among other sites. In 1958, the actor William Hudson was cast as Pelton in the episode "Wheel of Fortune" on the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. The episode focuses on Pelton's development of the principles of hydraulic mining. See also Hydropower Water turbine Hydraulic head References External links Introductory turbine math The North Star Mine and Powerhouse & Pelton Wheel Museum official website 1829 births 1908 deaths American mechanical engineers 19th-century American inventors American carpenters People from Vermilion, Ohio People from Yuba County, California Fluid dynamicists Engineers from Ohio American miners Inventors from Ohio