plaque on base of case: ‘COMPTEUR d’ENERGIE ELECTRIQUE | Syste. CAUDERAY FRAGER | Bte. S.G.D.G | COMPTE POUR LA FABRICATION | DES COMPTEURS & MATERIEL D’USINES. | 16 Bd. De Vaugirard, PARIS. 31 rue Claude Vellefaux. Plaque on front of case: ‘1891 | 25A – 100V | 22c523 Plaque: MADE IN FRANCE
Overview
By the 1880s, electricity use had become more widespread, and the increasing number of appliances available had also made the demand for electricity more difficult to predict. Where previously many companies had offered customers fixed rates, they now sought to bill according to usage – which therefore had to be measured, somehow. Several solutions to this problem were proposed: this is a design from the 1890s by French electrician Jules Cauderay. It uses an electrically maintained balance wheel which engages the dial work periodically according to the load passing through it. There are dials for 1s, 10s, 100s and 1000s. Having previously run an electricity company in Lausanne with his brother Henri, Cauderay patented his first functional electricity meter in 1883, and won a gold medal for it at the 1885 Paris Exhibition.
