Riedler Pumping Engine, 1901
date: label: Date made
content: 1901
name: label: maker
content: Allis-Chalmers Company
notes: label: Description
content: Between 1901 and 1959, this beautiful machine sat in the bowels of an electrical power generating station at Niagara Falls, New York, pumping oil to lubricate the turbines and other machinery. The pump was driven by waterpower, using a massive 26-bucket Pelton wheel.
label: Description
content: Lester Pelton, a millwright in Nevada City, California, improved waterwheels in the 1870s by redesigning their buckets. In the newly patented Pelton wheels built by his company in San Francisco, a jet of high-pressure water would be split by the bucket's dual hemispheres, deflecting each half of the jet back almost 180 degrees and thereby moving the wheel with considerably greater force.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanical and Civil Engineering
label: See more items in
content: Energy & Power
label: Exhibition
content: Power Machinery
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Niagara-Mohawk Power Corp.
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MC.321404
label: catalog number
content: 321404
label: accession number
content: 243295
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Engine, Pumping
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall:;