Why no Farad or Henry meter?

[mawyatt]

We have Volt meters, Amp meters, Ohm meters, why no Farad nor Henry meters??

Best,

[tom66]

My multimeter has a capacitance meter... and I have an LCR meter in a storage box somewhere that can do henries, though it can't quite do farads (max 100mF).

So they do exist...

[mawyatt]

So why don't we call a meter that measures capacitance a Farad Meter (or uFarad meter), or a meter that measures inductance a Henry Meter (or uHenry meter)? We also call a meter that measures power a Watt meter???

Best,

[iMo]

Henry? - because there is the Henry Repeating Arms.. 
(a firearms manufacturing company)

[JohanH]

You don't actually measure units. You measure a physical quantity and the result is designated with a unit. It would be better if it was called a current meter, voltage meter, resistance meter, capacitance meter etc.

[mawyatt]

We know, however we have Amp, Volt, Ohm and Watt meters, but no Farad or Henry meters??

Best

[soldar]

How about a "meter meter" to measure meters?

[mawyatt]

How about a "meter meter" to measure meters?

That's a good one indeed!!!

Best,

[TimFox]

We know, however we have Amp, Volt, Ohm and Watt meters, but no Farad or Henry meters??

Best

Perhaps the market is better for instruments with monosyllables in their name?

[PlainName]

Gosh, amazing how many people miss completely the thrust of the first post, despite it being restated several times. But, sadly, that's what one expects nowadays - the viewer sees the words as they go past but doesn't really understand them 

[PlainName]

How about a "meter meter" to measure meters?

Nice (but shouldn't it be metre meter?).

Or a litre meter.

[mawyatt]

Gosh, amazing how many people miss completely the thrust of the first post, despite it being restated several times. But, sadly, that's what one expects nowadays - the viewer sees the words as they go past but doesn't really understand them 

Thank goodness someone got the gist of this

Best,

[TimFox]

In France, it is pronounced (roughly) "me tre", hence the spelling.
In America, it is pronounced "meet er", hence the spelling.

[mawyatt]

How about a "meter meter" to measure meters?

Nice (but shouldn't it be metre meter?).

Or a litre meter.

Depends on which side of the big pond, meter or metre and liter or litre!!

Best,

[PlainName]

Here in GB it's hard to know which side of the pond one should stand on nowadays.

[themadhippy]

Here in GB it's hard to know which side of the pond one should stand on nowadays.

you obviously need a pond meter to give an indication of were you nee to be.

anyways back to the main event,could it be the size of the unit measured,very rarely do we measure 1 farad or 1 henry,its nearly always a fraction of the main unit.

[joeqsmith]

We know, however we have Amp, Volt, Ohm and Watt meters, but no Farad or Henry meters??

Best

Perhaps the market is better for instruments with monosyllables in their name?

We used to use VOM similar to RLC.  I think all of my meters are marked DCV/ACV for example rather than Volts.  Takes up too much room.

[antenna]

Amp, Volt, Ohm and Watt have the same implications irrespective of frequency.  To make a similar meter with Henrys and Farads, the error from parasitics and self-resonances must somehow be accounted for.  It is easier to pick a frequency and measure Ohms than it is to say with any certainty that this particular coil is 2.334uH at any frequency. 

[bsfeechannel]

Thank goodness someone got the gist of this

So, back to your OP. In German, volt-, am- and ohmmeter are respectively called tension, current and resistance meter (Spannungsmessgerät, Strommessgerät/Strommesser und Wiederstandsmessgerät), but I think those are the formal names. I'm not sure how German speakers refer to their meters colloquially.

[RoGeorge]

In the beginning, the capacitance was measured in Jars, because the first capacitors were in fact pickle jars filled with water, from the times when electricity was thought to be some sort of fluid, thus the jars that were filled with electricity by electrostatic machines.

1jar = 1111pF  Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jar_(unit)


A battery of four water-filled Leyden jars, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden
Pic source:  Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar

[Bud]

How about a "meter meter" to measure meters?

That's a good one indeed!!!

Best,

We have "Pizza pizza" fast food chain here.

[harerod]

Quote

Here in GB it's hard to know which side of the pond one should stand on nowadays.

you obviously need a pond meter to give an indication of were you nee to be.
...

I still have some old spring type Pond meters in storage, which have been replaced by Newton meters. A real challenge for our American friends, since a single letter would change the unit - Pound force meters - while measuring the same physical phenomenon.

Make sure not to confuse with Newtonmeter meters (pound force feet meters?)...

[SiliconWizard]

So why don't we call a meter that measures capacitance a Farad Meter (or uFarad meter), or a meter that measures inductance a Henry Meter (or uHenry meter)? We also call a meter that measures power a Watt meter???

We have LCR meters. The reason is that measuring pure capacitance (or inductance) is in practice of very little use, apart from quick checks, that many general-purpose DMMs embed. So that doesn't warrant a dedicated device.
Same for measuring "power". There's more to it than just a value in W, so there's no point in making a dedicated device just measuring that (what power are you talking about anyway?) But there are devices such as "power analyzers", that can measure relevant parameters around the concept of power. Just lie for LCR meters - because a single raw value has no real practical significance, unless again you just need "quick checks", that again many general-purpose devices will offer.

[schmitt trigger]

SiliconWizard;
Yours is the best answer, so far.

Real world inductors and capacitors have parasitic elements which should be accounted for if an accurate reading is to be expected.

[coppercone2]

horse meter vs horse power meter both useful

[armandine2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

I feel a course of general linguistics is over due 

[woofy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

I feel a course of general linguistics is over due 

Its easily done. Separating a deliberate play like this from mistakes can be hard, especially when English is not the first language of many folks here.

[PlainName]

So why don't we call a meter that measures capacitance a Farad Meter (or uFarad meter), or a meter that measures inductance a Henry Meter (or uHenry meter)? We also call a meter that measures power a Watt meter???

We have LCR meters. The reason is that measuring pure capacitance (or inductance) is in practice of very little use, apart from quick checks, that many general-purpose DMMs embed. So that doesn't warrant a dedicated device.
Same for measuring "power". There's more to it than just a value in W, so there's no point in making a dedicated device just measuring that (what power are you talking about anyway?) But there are devices such as "power analyzers", that can measure relevant parameters around the concept of power. Just lie for LCR meters - because a single raw value has no real practical significance, unless again you just need "quick checks", that again many general-purpose devices will offer.

We don't have volt meters either - they are typically multimeters and do at least resistance too. Of course, you can get just plain volt reading meters for niche use, but then I am fairly sure you can also get just plain capacitance meters if you have a niche for one. So why isn't that one a farad meter? Fewer syllables than 'capacitance' too (to head off other objections).

I also don't think that capacitance depending on frequency and/or other stuff is relevant - the whole purpose of a capacitance meter would be to sort all that stuff out for you. That's why you pay the big bucks!

[EPAIII]

Well, if you really feel there is a need for one, then build it and sell it and see how that goes.

[AVGresponding]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

I feel a course of general linguistics is over due 

Its easily done. Separating a deliberate play like this from mistakes can be hard, especially when English is not the first language of many folks here.

Some of the respondents in this thread are native English speakers, and still get it wrong...

I find the OP's observation an intriguing one, and can formulate no logical or consistent answer.

[retiredfeline]

It's just that you usually don't have to monitor capacitance or inductance but monitoring voltage and current is commonplace. Resistance less so, but enough measurements are made that such a meter has a name.

Ammeter is just far easier to say than amperemeter. Voltmeter doesn't trip the tongue so much. If meters for capacitance or inductance were commonplace, I suspect they'd get shortened to farmeter and henmeter.

Of course what really grates is that a potentiometer doesn't measure potentios and is not a meter, but a voltage divider. 

[PlainName]

I suspect they'd get shortened to farmeter and henmeter

Sounds cool! Perhaps we could start a trend tiktok using those 

[switchabl]

Well, the OED dates all of these terms to the 1880s (voltmeter, ammeter, ohmmeter, wattmeter). These would generally have been electromechanical single function instruments.

Capacitors and inductor on the other hand were measured using (manual and later semi-automatic) impedance bridges until well into the 1960/70s. Those probably shouldn't be called meters at all since they were based on substitution. AFAIK it was HP/Yokogawa who introduced the name "LCR meter" with the 4332A. Single function capacitance meters were never really a thing. I suppose they could still have called it "HFO meter" but I guess tastes had changed. Also, popular impedance bridges like the Type 650-A, introduced by General Radio in the 1930s, labelled measurement modes "CRL", so I guess people would have been somewhat familiar with that already.

[JohanH]

I'm looking forward to the memristance meter.

[tooki]

In France, it is pronounced (roughly) "me tre", hence the spelling.
In America, it is pronounced "meet er", hence the spelling.

The word is pronounced the same in the US (where it’s spelled meter) and the UK (where it’s pronounced metre) so this explanation is clearly not correct.

It’s simply a classic example of American English ending in -er where British* English ends in -re. Like theater and center, whose pronunciations are also the same in the US and the UK. (Ignoring rhoticity variants, since both the US and UK have rhotic and non-rhotic dialects.)

*British and all the other non-US dialects, with the possible exception of Canadian, which picks and chooses American or British spellings depending on the word… :p

[tooki]

Of course what really grates is that a potentiometer doesn't measure potentios and is not a meter, but a voltage divider. 

Indeed! It would have made sense to call it a “potentiostat” (a word that has since been claimed for a particular type of test equipment used in electrochemistry), since it sets the potential, much the way a rheostat sets current.

Huh, and look at this: there is a measurement device called a potentiometer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiometer_(measuring_instrument)

Since it contains at its core a potentiometer (i.e. a variable resistor), maybe the variable resistor got its name from this.

[coromonadalix]

I'm Canadian French

We are often using some american slang or the common ones, or the shortest appelations / names 
or mix the english term in french discutions  etc ...  or anything who please   loll

multimêtre, voltmêtre, amperèmêtre, joulemêtre,  "capacimêtre" "Cap meter"  loll

lcr meter, lcr mêtre, voltmeter, "amp meter", electrometer, DMM,  "Meter" aka multimeter

trimpot, pot, slide pot,  potmeter  loll   potentiometer is too long,  but the old techs are still using the long name

[TimFox]

In France, it is pronounced (roughly) "me tre", hence the spelling.
In America, it is pronounced "meet er", hence the spelling.

The word is pronounced the same in the US (where it’s spelled meter) and the UK (where it’s pronounced metre) so this explanation is clearly not correct.

It’s simply a classic example of American English ending in -er where British* English ends in -re. Like theater and center, whose pronunciations are also the same in the US and the UK. (Ignoring rhoticity variants, since both the US and UK have rhotic and non-rhotic dialects.)

*British and all the other non-US dialects, with the possible exception of Canadian, which picks and chooses American or British spellings depending on the word… :p

Note that I said nothing about British pronunciation and spelling in my post.  I was giving my opinion on why American spelling prefers "meter".
The divergence in spelling dates back to Noah Webster's extreme revisions starting in 1806, many of which (such as deleting "u" from "colour" and "ue" from "analogue") have persisted.
His 1828 dictionary is available online:  https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/meter  "This word is most improperly written metre. How very absurd to write the simple word in this manner, but in all its numerous compounds, meter as in diameter, hexameter, thermometer, etc."

[RoGeorge]

In Romanian (a language from the Romance group - like Italian, Spanish, French, etc.) it is spelled 'metru'.
The genealogy of the 'metru' word is from the Greek 'metron', which would translate as 'a/one measure' (as in one unit).

In Ro, all the other 'metru' composed words have the same Greek-like termination:
'diametru', 'hexametru', 'termometru', 'kilometru', etc.

[TimFox]

I assume that in Romanian the pronunciation follows the "tru" spelling?

[RoGeorge]

Indeed.

[TimFox]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from the collision of Romance languages (especially French) with the Germanic languages in the development of the language since 1066 (Norman conquest).
The Roman alphabet is a reasonably efficient coding of Latin pronunciation, but it gets less efficient as the language to be spelled gets more distant from Latin, including Germanic and Slavic languages.
When a Swedish associate tried to help me with a railway timetable, he insisted on pronouncing the station names in correct Swedish, to which I cried out in anguish "Is this is the Roman alphabet we are using here?"

[themadhippy]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from

Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

[TimFox]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from

Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

The problems to which I referred there are more prevalent in the UK than in US.
For example, the pronunciation of "lieutenant".
Specifically, the adoption of French words into the English language (long before 1776) often brought French spellings as baggage, despite native pronunciation of the words themselves.

The best reference for these questions, written, edited, and published by an authoritative UK source is "The Oxford Companion to the English Language", from Oxford University Press  (that's in England).
  https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199661282.001.0001/acref-9780199661282

Similarly, most Austrians speak German, as do many Swiss.
Some Canadians speak French.
Far more people in the Western Hemisphere speak Spanish than those in Spain.
Similarly, for Portuguese.
Live with it!

[RoGeorge]

Intriguingly, in English it's 'metronome' (etymology Greek 'metron' - the measure, plus 'nomos' - regulating).
By the form 'meter', one would expect the spelling to be 'meternome', yet it is spelled 'metronome'. 

[TimFox]

In English (both UK and US), "metronome" and "metrology" are pronounced as in that spelling, with "tro" instead of "ter".
("Meteorology" is from a different Greek root.)
The important pronunciation difference is whether the Greek root is at the beginning or end of the word.
Unfortunately, Americans often insist on spelling "theater" (as it is pronounced) as "theatre" (to feign Frenchness).
However, "theatrical" is always spelled in an analogous fashion to "metronome", again following pronunciation, where the Greek root is at the beginning.

Note that in both the UK and US, "metre/meter", "litre/liter", "theatre/theater", etc. are always pronounced with "ter".

Also, "meter" meaning measurement device and "parameter" are always spelled "ter" in English.
Since the metric system was first developed in France, French names (metre, litre, etc.) were applied to the new units, but when English-speaking people adopted them, the pronunciations quickly went to "ter".

[Ground_Loop]

[/quote]

We don't have volt meters either - they are typically multimeters and do at least resistance too. Of course, you can get just plain volt reading meters for niche use, but then I am fairly sure
[/quote]
Yea we do.

[tooki]

Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from

Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

Yyyyeah, that’s not how languages work, buddy. The fact that you and I can understand each other without any difficulty is a very strong indicator that we are using the same language. (Mutual intelligibility is a core criterion for whether two systems of speech are considered to be distinct languages vs. different dialects of the same language.)

Bringing politics into the picture gets you the situation of Serbo-Croatian, whose two main dialects are now referred to as separate languages by their speakers, due to the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Linguistically speaking, they’re the same language, just as both British English and American English are dialects of “English”, which refers to all dialects of it.

I’ve said this before and I'll say it again and again: it’s absolutely incredible (in the sense of incredulity, not admiration) how condescending, dismissive, and aggressive the British get towards Americans regarding the language, despite the fact that modern British English (in its numerous regional dialects) and modern American English have both evolved away from our ancestral English of 400 years ago. Certainly neither dialect has any claim on being any more “correct” or “authentic” nowadays. And it’s also well-documented that where British and American English differ, it’s often American English that stays closer to the ancestral form. That’s not the case in this instance, but it is true a lot more often than you’d think. As for Americans: I’m not sure we should take any crap about our English from the country that is also home to Cockney and countless other regional dialects that teeter on the brink of unintelligibility. They have “bastardized” their language every bit as much as we have, arguably more so.

[AVGresponding]

It's just that you usually don't have to monitor capacitance or inductance but monitoring voltage and current is commonplace. Resistance less so, but enough measurements are made that such a meter has a name.

Ammeter is just far easier to say than amperemeter. Voltmeter doesn't trip the tongue so much. If meters for capacitance or inductance were commonplace, I suspect they'd get shortened to farmeter and henmeter.

Of course what really grates is that a potentiometer doesn't measure potentios and is not a meter, but a voltage divider. 

A potentiometer meters out electrical potential, hence the name.

[andre_teprom]

I guess we don't have Farad and Henry meters because they're not as commonly needed in everyday electrical measurements. Farads are more about capacitance, and Henrys deal with inductance, which are usually used in more specialized situations.

[TimFox]

However, one does sometimes encounter a "Coulombmeter" to measure charge.
Many of the ones listed now are for estimating battery charge, but some are for sparks or surface charge.

[PlainName]

Volts, amps and watts are all dynamic derived values. I wonder if that has a bearing, or if it's just coincidence that the group lend their names to instruments.

[DavidAlfa]

I completely understood the first post, can't figure out how so many people struggled?

Yeah, it's interesting at least, You don't measure caps in "capacitances" (Please source a 25V 100uCapacitances capacitor!) neither coils in "inductances".
If those are called LCR meters (Or just capacitor/inductor meters when doing only one measurement type), then the rest should be voltage/intensity/resistance meters, not volt/amp/ohm meters.

And why is this called a flexometer?
It measures distance, not flexing, so it should be called meter/distance/length meter ! 

[CatalinaWOW]

I think the prior post referencing the time frame of the naming nails most of the reason.With a residuum coming from the size of the units.  Volts, Ohms and Amperes are quantities encountered commonly.  But a Farad capacitor was unimaginable until 20 or 30 years ago.  Henry inductors are not quite as outre, but neither is commonly encountered.

I think the references to parasitics is a red herring.  Many applications can neglect these in inductors and capacitors, and many applications care about parasitics in resistors and ripple, noise and other details in measurements of voltage and current.

[PlainName]

I completely understood the first post, can't figure out how so many people struggled?

Are you sure?

Yeah, it's interesting at least, You don't measure caps in "capacitances" (Please source a 25V 100uCapacitances capacitor!) neither coils in "inductances".

I think you are arse about face on that. The question is why there are no 'farad' meters or 'Henry' meters, not noting that we don't use voltage or intensity or flex meters.

[EPAIII]

Oh, I thought we were talking about electronics or at least electricity since this is an electronic forum. Silly me. And then we get accused of not getting the point when the OP did a really poor job of making that point.

So we are actually talking about linguistics, not electronics or electricity. Frankly I think we were deliberately (or ignorantly) deceived into this discussion and I, for one, do not like it. If the nomenclature for the instruments we use is a questionable use of language, English or otherwise, then just how very questionable and deceptive is the OP's use of language here? Far, far better language could and certainly should have been used in the original post. And I DO see the irony in that. 

Because topics like this waste the member's time, such deceptions should be against the forum's rules and members who practice such, weather it be deliberate or in their own great ignorance, should be advised against future occurrences.


And, like it or not, the nomenclature we use in science and technology is often created by haphazard and/or accidental circumstances surrounding and following the initial or early uses of that technology. When you originate something or make it popular, the name you give it usually sticks. And the rest of us, at later times in history, are just plain stuck with it. It does no good to debate over what is should have been.

Grow up! Drink less beer! And move on with your life.