TESCO – The Eastern Specialty Company was founded in 1904 by a Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) Engineer. In the 1910’s TESCO developed the first Test Switches, in the 1920’s the first load boxes, test kits, and rotating standards. In the 1940’s and 1950’s TESCO pioneered large Demand Boards and Meter Test boards for meter shops and by the 1960’s had become an industry standard for electric meter testing. Utilities all across North America have used and relied on TESCO products for more than 115 years.

After decades of success, TESCO was acquired by Advent Design Corporation in 2003. Advent Design has worked with electric metering service departments at utilities throughout the United States since 1984 developing equipment for scores of custom field and shop applications. Advent also provided meter shop layout and meter test program consulting expertise. During the early 1990’s Advent Design pioneered the development of innovative statistical testing programs for both electric and gas utilities. Using Advent Design’s broad range of engineering expertise, TESCO’s product line was revamped to bring new life to the existing products and also introduce new AMI specific products. TESCO now has the largest offering of AMI specific products as well as traditional metering products in the industry and continues to develop new products as well as next generation products at a faster pace than any other company in our industry. With this success, TESCO grew to become more than 90% of Advent Design’s business. In May of 2020 the entire company was re-branded as TESCO – The Eastern Specialty Company.

TESCO has a Canadian manufacturing facility in Lachine, Montreal. Mesurina, purchased by TESCO in 2007, produces a complete line of test switches for the Canadian market and has been serving their customers since 1976. TESCO’s meter seals are also produced in Montreal and our Software development team is headquartered in Canada with a team of over two dozen software development engineers.

In March 2018, TESCO acquired Knopp, Inc. Located in the San Francisco, CA, area Knopp was founded in 1928 by a meter engineer from Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). The Knopp product line perfectly complements the TESCO brand. Knopp has developed a worldwide reputation for designing and manufacturing high precision current and voltage transformers for classifying and testing instrument and relay transformers for electric utilities and the manufacturers of these transformers for the electric utilities.

TESCO also has a development team in the Philippines. TESCO – Power Measurements Inc. was acquired in 2018 and will begin to manufacture some TESCO equipment for our Philippine and Pacific Rim customers. TESCO is a believer in local manufacturing using locally sourced components.

We are voting members of the ANSI Committee on Metering and we chair a variety of sub-committees and several of our engineers have been honored by their industry peers and inducted into their Meter School Hall of Fames. In 2018 TESCO was named the Best Small Manufacturer in the Philadelphia Region and in 2016 awarded Pennsylvania’s Keystone Award for Performance Excellence. That year the award was given to only one Manufacturer – TESCO. Let TESCO’s commitment to manufacturing, Research and Development and pushing the boundaries in the electric metering industry help your utility meet your field and shop testing requirements now and in the future.

Original TESCO Building, Philadelphia

G-50 Meter Test Kit

TESCO Meter Test Board