Mettler Toledo
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| Public | |
| Traded as | : MTD S&P 500 Component |
| Industry | Scientific instruments |
| Predecessor |
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| Founded | 1989 |
| Headquarters | Greifensee, Switzerland |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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| Revenue |  US$ 2,486 million (2014) |
| US$ 445 million (2014) |
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| Profit | US$ 338 million (2014) |
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Number of employees
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13,100 (2014) |
| Divisions |
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| Website | www |
Mettler-Toledo (: MTD) is a multinational manufacturer of scales and analytical instruments. It is the largest provider of weighing instruments for use in laboratory, industrial, and food retailing applications. The company also provides various analytical instruments, process analytics instruments, and end-of-line inspection systems. The company operates worldwide, with 35% of net sales derived from both Europe and the Americas, and 30% from Asia and other countries.
Allen DeVilbiss, Jr. (1873-1911) was an inventor who lived in Toledo, Ohio, USA. He became interested in the concept of weighing machines and conceived the idea of an automatic computing pendulum scale. He was able to prove his concept with a local butcher, who realized that customers appreciated the automatic computation which eliminated the risk of overcharging. While his invention gained in popularity, DeVilbiss was not interested in making it a viable business.
In 1900, Henry Theobald (1868-1924) was fired from his job at the National Cash Register Company. He decided to start his own business, and was convinced that selling the automatic computing scales could be a good business. He solicited additional financial investors and purchased the company from DeVilbiss. On July 10, 1901, the Toledo Computing Scale and Cash Register Company was incorporated.
By May 1902, Theobald's company was selling more than 100 cash registers with scales per month. By that time, John H. Patterson, Theobald's boss from NCR, threatened to sue the new company for patent infringements. As an alternative, Patterson offered to purchase all cash register patents and property, along with the stipulation that Theobald would no longer engage in the cash register business. The investors, who worried about the costs of patent infringement litigation, agreed to the sale in June 1902. Since cash registers were no longer part of Theobald's business, he changed the name to Toledo Computing Scale Company. Theobald later coined the phrase "No Springs, Honest Weight" as a slogan for the new company.
In the years that followed, Theobald realized that the weighing scale was the most important part of the retail transaction between the merchant and the customer. He felt that many of his competitors who used spring scale technology, especially Dayton Scale Company, were allowing merchants to cheat their customers by incorrectly calculating the total price of a measured good. He campaigned for more government regulation of weights and measures to eliminate dishonest weighing systems. On October 1, 1907, Massachusetts adopted the first weights and measures laws in the United States.
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