Hoyt Electrical Instrument Works Inc. has been manufacturing in Penacook, New Hampshire since 1904.

Hoyt’s founding father Adrian Hazen Hoyt was born in 1862 in Magog a Province of Quebec, where he attended the grammar schools and the business college of Davis and Dewie in Montreal. He was also an 1887 graduate of Dartmouth College, with the degree of M.D. Dr. Hoyt started his own practice in Magog but finding it not congenial to his bent of mind; so, he relocated to St. Johnsbury, Vermont where he entered the employ of the Standard Electric Company. This is where Hoyt learned of his love for electricity and a year and a half later, he moved to Manchester NH, where he engaged in electrical experimental work for several years. A number of these devices were used in the construction of automobiles, which Dr. Hoyt had always taken a deep interest in. He was also one of the first in America to make practical use of X-rays.

In 1880 Adrian Hoyt accepted the position of manager of the Whitney Electrical Instrument Company and by 1888 Whitney was building ornate, brass cased station meters. When the company moved to Penacook Hoyt followed establishing a residence and continued as superintendent and manager of the company, filling those positions until early 1900 where he built and engaged in business for himself. He erected a shop that employed a number of mechanics in the manufacturing of automobiles and electrical instrumentation, where he was manufacturing his own line of well known “direct reading” meters. At this time Dr. Hoyt began to build his steam cars at his American Manufacturing Company in Penacook.

Dr. Hoyt owned the first automobile in New Hampshire and was one of the founders of the New Hampshire Automobile Club in 1900. In total Hoyt built and designed six electric and five steam cars. Hoyt also had one of the first car dealerships that serviced customers from New England to as far North as Montreal Canada. Frequent visitors to his manufacturing plant and dealership included his longtime friend Henry Ford.

Dr. Hoyt secured twenty-five or more patents on electrical measuring instruments and scientific apparatus. He was also the inventor of the alternating current ammeter. Dr. Hoyt displayed the energy and enthusiasm in his industrial employment and in inventing and since his creation of Hoyt Electrical Instrument Works in 1904, Hoyt and its employees have lived by the rule that“Everything worth doing is worth doing well “.

At Hoyt Electrical Instrument Works, the rule is honored today as it was by the previous generations who founded and fostered a company exclusively to making a better line of panel meters. From the Hoyt family members who have manufactured meters since 1890 and have owned and actively operated the business since 1904, to the skilled production workers in the plant, Hoyt people apply their unique skills to the design and manufacture of analog panel meters that meet and exceed industry standards.