The History and Future of the Electric Meter

Lynne Kiesling

Last month, Wired celebrated the 120th anniversary of the electricity meter. More specifically, the anniversary of the patent for the first really commercially viable electro-mechanical meter. Edison, being Edison, had come up with others before, but they “didn’t scale”, and were messy because they were chemical, not mechanical. This post provides a nice synopsis of the development of the induction watt-hour meter and its importance in the development of the electricity industry.

Wired also accompanies this post with a photo gallery of the history of electricity. The last photo in the series is of Tendril’s Insight in-home display, of which I’m a big fan, as I alluded to in my recent post about whether or not smart grid devices are transactive.