On 12 Dec, 11:42, Andy Dingley wrote:
On 11 Dec, 16:56, Osprey wrote:

It used to be a scam to reverse leads to make them run backwards

Nope, trad mechanical meters just don't care (unless you get inside
the meter case and swap some of the internal wiring).


The little wheel (disc) is acted upon by the product of the voltage
coil and the current coil alternating magnetic fields.
It did make the disc run slow when I saw one of these things some
years ago and tried it on an old mechanical kWh meter which I had on
stock at the time.

If it had not worked there would have been nothing for the RDOs to
gain by fitting solid block input connectors or the current range of
sleeves to their meters. The mere fact they did at some cost should
tell you something.



The "gadget" was an inductor that messed with the power factor of the
load, thus confusing the meter. It didn't make them go backwards, but
it did slow them down. Most of these were made up in little back
street electrical shops (like City Surplus in Liverpool) then sold to
their end users. As the end user often isn't the sharpest square wave
on the 'scope, they were freqently caught by meter reader's
inspection, then persuaded to name the supplier to lighten their own
fine.

Mechanical meters have also been deliberately resistant to running
backwards (ratchets etc.) since the '20s at least - there are many
patent mechanisms for this.

I don't believe this story of "swapped wires made the meter reverse".
Certainly not from an OP talking of positive and negative connections.