Flow Research

Did Eastech Manufacture the First Inline Vortex Flowmeter? In an article in David Spitzer’s book “Flow Measurement,” Mason P. Wilson says “Not until 1958 did a vortex shedding flowmeter, developed by Alan E. Rodely, have a limited commercial success.” This claim is inconsistent with the documentary record. Rodely was born in 1935 in Salford, England, and graduated from the University of Bristol in 1956. He appears to have emigrated to the United States between 1956 and 1966, when he worked for American Standard and filed a U.S. patent from there. In 1958 he would have been only 23 years old and had no known colleagues or supporting company. His first known vortex-related patents were granted in 1971 for Eastech Inc. in Watchung, New Jersey. No evidence places him in the U.S. or in vortex research as early as 1958, making Mason P. Wilson’s 1958 claim wildly implausible—likely a decade error or a misunderstanding of Eastech’s later work.

In reality, for multiple reasons, Eastech’s vortex meter never achieved sufficient commercial success to consider it a serious contender to either Yokogawa’s insertion flare meter (1969) or Yokogawa’s inline YEWFLO meter, released in 1979. If anything, intellectual credit should go more to Theodore Fussell than to Alan E. Rodely, who is sometimes hailed as the intellectual creator of the vortex meter. Rodely had a good concept that was improved on by Fussell, but was never good enough to achieve commercial success beyond the creation of prototypes masquerading as customer sales. In other words, it never got beyond the Beta stage, as we would say today.

The diagram below traces the Eastech/Neptune vortex-flowmeter lineage, showing its acquisition by G. Corson Ellis Jr. and formation of Eastech Vortex. It shows G. Corson Ellis as the bridge between Neptune Measurement and Frank Sinclair. Ellis purchased the Eastech hashtag line from Neptune in 1983. Evidence suggests that Frank Sinclair purchased Ellis' Eastech Vortex in 2000 from Ellis and an associate and retired the product line in 2001, forming Eastech Flow Controls with Badger Meter's ultrasonic line. It also includes the later acquisition of Nice Instrumentation by Badger Meter in 2016. Badger also inherited hashtag
hashtag meter technology originally derived from Racine Federated (2012). Blue nodes represent vortex and instrumentation companies, while gray nodes show Ellis’s other ventures—Keptel (telecom) and Kepware Technologies (software). For more information, go to https://lnkd.in/e-CPqjCw.