in 1879, lester pelton, experimenting with a knight wheel, developed a double bucket design, which exhausted the water to the side, eliminating some energy loss of the knight wheel which exhausted some water back against the center of the wheel. in about 1895, william doble improved on pelton's half-cylindrical bucket form with an elliptical bucket that included a cut in it to allow the jet a cleaner bucket entry. this is the modern form of the pelton turbine which today achieves up to 92% efficiency. pelton had been quite an effective promoter of his design and although doble took over the pelton company he did not change the name to doble because it had brand name recognition.