Did You Know...
...that to encourage use of his new invention, the shopping cart, market owner Sylvan Goldman hired fake shoppers to push the carts around his store in Oklahoma City? Seems his customers were reluctant to give up their hand-carried baskets.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 4218737 | Revenue metering system for power companies An energy meter at an electrical substation contains a detector which chas state each time a quantity of energy is consumed. This data is accumulated in a microprocessor system. Real time energy consumption data is fed back to a customer monitoring stati... | 08/19/1980 |
| 4207557 | User electric energy consumption apparatus A supplemental energy register in which successive increments of consumed electrical energy are detected at a kilowatthour meter, and are translated into electrical pulse signals. Digital calculation and display logic is operated by the pulses, either dir... | 06/10/1980 |
| 4162530 | Automatic energy supply systems of the multi-rate calculating type According to the supply system, a customer purchases a chip corresponding to a predetermined amount of electricity from a power company and sets the chip in a control device installed in the customer house. The supply system comprises an integrating watth... | 07/24/1979 |
| 4133034 | Method and means of assimilating utility meter data A method of assimilating utility meter data at the meter locations by accumulating on an input tape customer profile information for a plurality of meter customers, including the customer's account number, service address, meter number, customer name, pre... | 01/02/1979 |
| 4120031 | Utility usage monitoring systems Utility usage monitoring systems for monitoring the consumption or use of a particular utility and displaying the accumulated use in terms of its cost. The rate of usage of the utility is converted to a pulse train with a repetition rate dependent upon th... | 10/10/1978 |
| 4110606 | Utility meter readout system A portable automatic billing and printing device which provides for an automatic calculation and printout of a customer bill for utilities such as water, gas and electricity. A customer utility card is positioned within the apparatus and pertinent data is... | 08/29/1978 |
| 4106095 | Electrical usage display system The specification discloses a system for displaying a cumulative indication of the estimated cost of electrical usage in a dwelling wherein electricity is applied through an electrical supply main. A coil is inductively coupled to the supply main for gene... | 08/08/1978 |
| 4080568 | Energy monitoring device The monitoring of energy consumed in a single phase, three wire electrical system is accomplished by generating a voltage proportional to the current flowing in the system, which is conveyed to a linear voltage controlled oscillator by a single electrical... | 03/21/1978 |
| 4034839 | Simplified multi-price vend control circuit A vend and price selection control circuit including selection switches actuatable by a customer to produce any of a plurality of possible vends at different vend prices, all of which are controlled by the same control and logic circuitry and circuit elem... | 07/12/1977 |
| 4002890 | Method of charging fuel costs among the various apartments in an apartment house or the like and suitable devices in this connection Allocation of heating costs in an apartment building having a central heating plant common to a number of apartments in dependency of the heat comfort really enjoyed by the consumers concerned by basing said allocation upon a representative instantaneous ... | 01/11/1977 |
| 3932730 | Point-of-action billing transactor A utility billing transactor is disclosed for entering a new meter reading, computing the amount of utility service delivered as the difference between a previous meter reading and the new meter reading, computing the amount to be paid, and printing a bil... | 01/13/1976 |
