Jewish Invention Myths: The Electric Meter

Moving on to another ‘Jewish Invention’ myth we have the claim that jews invented the electric meter as enunciated by Pam Karp in his ‘Jewish Inventors’ list on ‘Geni’.

She lists the ‘jewish inventor’ as follows:

‘Hermann Aron- German engineer- electric meter.’ (1)

Now this is typical nonsense in that yes Aron did create an electric meter called the ‘Pendelzaehler’ (lit. ‘Pendulum Counter’) in 1883, but he wasn’t either the first nor was his metre the most common solution that was plumped for.

As the website ‘Smart Energy’ explains the electric meter was actually invented and patented eleven years earlier in the United States by a non-jewish man named Samuel Gardiner:

‘The earliest meter was Samual Gardiner’s (USA) lamphour meter patented in 1872. It measured the time during which energy was supplied to the load, as all the lamps connected to this meter were controlled by one switch.’ (2)

While Thomas Edison himself invented another kind of electric meter in 1879 as ‘Edison Tech Center’ explains:

‘1879 Thomas Edison desperately needs a way to measure the electricity his customers would use. He developed a chemical meter with two rods of copper in a solution, as power was used one of the electrodes dissolved, showing by mass how much power had been used. This invention was not ready for use when the Pearl Street Station started working with customers, so early customers got electricity for free. After a year Edison started using the chemical meter but it was not accurate and customers were unhappy.’ (3)

Indeed Aron’s ‘Pendelzaehler’ of 1883 had already been invented two years earlier in 1881 in the United States by William Edward Ayrton and John Perry but without Aron knowing about it (allegedly). (4)

Aron’s ‘Pendelzaehler’ was indeed promoted by his fellow jew Hugo Hirsch – who later changed his name to ‘Sir Hugo Hirst’ – in Britain and later attained widespread use but it only replaced the pre-existing widespread electricity metres that already existed in Britain called ‘Reason’ electric meters.

So no jews did not invent nor popularise the electric meter!

References

(1) https://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Inventors/12388

(2) https://www.smart-energy.com/features-analysis/the-history-of-the-electricity-meter/ also see https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_703350 and https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/light-up-your-life-history-electric-meter-diarmuid-crowley

(3) https://edisontechcenter.org/Meters.html

(4) https://www.smart-energy.com/features-analysis/the-history-of-the-electricity-meter/