Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Thomas O'Conor
Taken: June 7, 2006
Caption: Historic Knight Wheel
Additional Description: Notice the curved buckets on the edge of the wheel. This was the heart of Knight’s invention. “The fundamental principle he exploited is that if the water jets into the bucket at a velocity of 100 miles per hour, and the buckets are traveling by at 50 miles per hour, the water does a Uturn in the bucket and drops out at zero miles per hour. In other words, the buckets must travel at about half the speed of the water when the wheel is doing work. In theory and in fact, most of the water’s kinetic energy is thus passed on to the wheel.” — Amador Ledger Dispatch article.
Submitted: August 28, 2007, by Thomas O'Conor of Northridge, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p6158
File Size: 1.820 Megabytes

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