the.com/voltmeter
the polite eavesdropper that measures pressure without ever stealing a single drop of current
means A voltmeter is an instrument that measures the electric potential difference, or voltage, between two points in a circuit.
from A tidy compound of two parts. The 'volt' honors Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist who built the first chemical battery and lent his name to the unit of electric potential. The '-meter' tail comes from Greek 'metron,' meaning 'measure' — the same ending you find in thermometer, barometer, and speedometer. So the word literally announces itself: a measurer of volts.
- high resistance
- Built huge so almost no current leaks through it
- parallel only
- Wired across a component, never in line
- galvanometer roots
- Born from a needle-and-coil spun by magnetism
- infinite ideal
- The perfect one would have infinite resistance
- voltage is relative
- It measures difference, never an absolute value
fluke 87 multimeter — handheld digital voltmeter sold by fluke corporation since 1989, industry standard with 20,000 count display
agilent 34401a — precision benchtop digital multimeter/voltmeter by agilent technologies, 6.5 digit resolution, widely used in labs since 1990s