Prefatory note: I am not an electrical engineer or manufacturer. I'm a programmer by trade. So take my advice and opinions with a grain of salt.

I've had occasion recently to get better educated on electronics and electronic circuitry. Using what I've learned, I've applied this to the design, cost and manufacturing of e-meters on a theoretical level. No, I do not plan to open my own shop to manufacture meters. But I do have a few things to say on the subject.

First, let me clear two words/phrases so you understand them.

The main circuit component of the e-meter is a well-known one called a "Wheatstone Bridge". It is used in a variety of electronic applications, not just e-meters. There are several other circuits which comprise the overall electronics of the e-meter as well. There is a voltage reduction circuit which drops the 120 or 220 volts coming out of your wall to a working voltage inside the e-meter of something probably an order of magnitude smaller. This is a guess, but the voltage inside an e-meter these days is probably on the order of five volts or so.

Then there are circuits to drive the moving needle and work with the various dials and switches on the e-meter which affect sensitivity and the like. But really, the circuitry is more or less simple.

At a guess, just taking a simple description of what an e-meter does, any decent electrical engineer or circuit designer should be able to design a set of circuits to do what the e-meter does in an afternoon or so.

Fabrication of a prototype would depend on the method. For through-hole construction, The assembly of a working model might take an engineer another afternoon. Testing would require another afternoon. Assembly of the components into a case would take a few minutes. Surface mount with robots (if you could sell enough to justify the cost of a facility to do it) would take about 10 minutes or less for complete board fabrication.

The case itself could be anything you liked, from the wood of the old Mark Vs to the molded plastic of the current Mark VIIIs. Even a metal case could be used, with proper insulation used inside.

So the design and fabrication of a prototype e-meter would take about a day and a half. For complete fabrication of a working e-meter (as on an assembly line), the time required might be about a day. It could be as little as a couple of hours.

Since the circuitry of the e-meter is so simple, the cost for electronic components should top out at less than a hundred dollars. The case cost could vary quite a bit, depending on whether you preferred wood or plastic. The old wood cases would take some time to manufacture and put together. Plastic cases (which would be better suited to large manufacturing runs) could come by the box load. Cost for manufacturing the plastic cases would be about probably half what the wood costs. At a rough guess, wooden cases would cost about 30 to 50 dollars to make, using pre-fabricated parts. Plastic ones would probably be less than 10 dollars apiece. This assumes American labor.

Based on all the above, it's fair to say a meter's cost of construction should run on the order of $200 or less and no more, possibly quite a bit less.

So if you have someone wanting to charge you hundreds and hundreds of dollars (or thousands, like the Church), realize they are making a considerable profit off you.

As a software engineer, I could program an e-meter software program for a computer in probably a couple of weeks or less. I do not recommend this, for reasons I've detailed before. But it could be done, and for an amount less than the cost of a physical e-meter, much less. Say, on the order of about 30 to 50 dollars retail.

Patents do exist on the official e-meters the Church has put out for years. They could be used as a reference, but aren't technically necessary. They are a good idea for a standard. But again, the circuits in an e-meter are relatively simple. Proper care in testing any new design against an existing meter's performance (and proper care in providing high quality internal components) would result in an e-meter of near-identical quality and standard performance.

As I stated in the beginning, I'm not an engineer or fabricator. But I'm willing to bet I'm not far off in my estimates above. If you disagree and have the necessary qualifications to do so, feel free to comment.