as "attracted disk electrometers", attraction electrometers are sensitive balances measuring the attraction between charged disks. William Snow Harris is credited with the invention of this instrument, which was further improved by Lord Kelvin. Kelvin's quadrant electrometer Developed by Lord Kelvin, this is the most sensitive and accurate of all the mechanical electrometers. The original design uses a light aluminum sector suspended inside a drum cut into four segments. The segments are insulated and connected diagonally in pairs. The charged aluminum sector is attracted to one pair of segments and repelled from the other. The deflection is observed by a beam of light reflected from a small mirror attached to the sector, just as in a galvanometer. The engraving on the right shows a slightly different form of this electrometer, using four flat plates rather than closed segments. The plates can be connected externally in the conventional diagonal way (as shown), or in a different order for specific applications. A more sensitive form of quadrant electrometer was developed by Frederick Lindemann. It employs a metal-coated quartz fiber instead of an aluminum sector. The deflection is measured by observing the movement of the fiber under a microscope. Initially used for measuring star light, it was employed for the infrared detection of airplanes in the early stages of World War II. Some mechanical electrometers were housed inside a cage often referred to as a “bird cage”. This is a form of Faraday Cage that protected the instrument from external electrostatic charges. Electrograph Electricity readings may be recorded continuously with a device known as an electrograph. Francis Ronalds created an early electrograph around 1814 in which the changing electricity made a pattern in a rotating resin-coated plate. It was employed at Kew Observatory and the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the 1840s to create records of variations in atmospheric electricity. In 1845, Ronalds invented photographic means of registering the atmospheric electricity. The photosensitive surface was pulled slowly past of the aperture diaphragm of the camera box, which also housed an electrometer, and captured ongoing movements of the electrometer indices as a trace. Kelvin used similar photographic means for his quadrant electrometer (see above) in the 1860s. Modern electrometers A modern electrometer is a highly sensitive electronic voltmeter whose input impedance is so high that the current flowing into it can be considered, for most practical purposes, to be zero. The actual value of input resistance