Charging for electricity in the early years of electricity supply

The paper begins by outlining the difficulties which faced the early electrical entrepreneurs when they tried to devise methods of charging for electricity supply which were fair, accurate and economic. It discusses the alternatives to fully metered supplies, and also the arguments about the relative merits of energy and quantity meters. The major part of the paper describes the most important types of electricity supply meter and how they developed over a period of about ten years from the opening in 1882 of Edison's Holborn Viaduct electricity supply system, where meters were first used. Detailed technical descriptions of the meters are not given, but references to this information are quoted where possible. An attempt is made to show how widely the different designs of meter were used and to give the opinions of contemporary engineers about them.