History
The E-meter has undergone many changes since it was invented by Volney Mathison, an early collaborator with Hubbard. The Mathison Electropsychometer (as it was then called) was adopted for use in Dianetics and Scientology by Hubbard in the early 1950s, before being temporarily dropped in 1954 during a dispute with Mathison.
In a quote from Bent Corydon's Messiah or Madman?,
It was the Mathison E-Meter, and Mathison was determined to keep it that way. So in late 1954 the use of the E-meter was discontinued by Hubbard. Wrote Hubbard: "Yesterday, we used an instrument called an E-Meter to register whether or not the process was still getting results so that the auditor would know how long to continue it. While the E-Meter is an interesting investigation instrument and has played its part in research, it is not today used by the auditor... As we long ago suspected, the intervention of a mechanical gadget between the auditor and the preclear had a tendency to depersonalize the session..."
In 1958 when Scientologists Don Breeding and Joe Wallis developed a modified, smaller battery-operated version, which they presented to Hubbard, he again used it. This was christened the Hubbard electrometer. Hubbard patented it on December 6, 1966, as a "Device for Measuring and Indicating Changes in the Resistance of a Human Body" (U.S. Patent 3,290,589). The patent is now expired and in the public domain. The Church of Scientology continues to make, sell, and teach its use in auditing.
Mathison never litigated the appropriation of his invention, but he felt bitter and disillusioned about Hubbard. Mathison remarked in 1964, "I decry the doings of trivial fakers, such as scientologists and the like, who glibly denounce hypnosis and then try covertly to use it in their phony systems".
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