Pelstar, LLC designs, manufactures and markets, a comprehensive line of professional
products under the 90-year-old venerable brand of Health o meter. Originally formed in 1919
as the Continental Scale Works, its heritage is as the inventor of the “doctor’s” beam scale.
Today, Pelstar maintains the tradition as one of the leading producers of weighing instruments
for professional health care and medical uses, along with market-leading innovations such as
their ELEVATE EMRscale™ and multiple EMR connectivity solutions.
The First Personal Scale
The Germans introduced the first bathroom scale in the early 1910s. The Juraso, named after
German inventors Jas Raveno & son used a small mirror at a forty-five degree angle to allow
users to read the dial while standing on the scale. The scale became a popular novelty item
and was selling worldwide within a few years. Chicago's Marshall Field's department store
began carrying the scale in 1913. At the same time, household kitchen scales were gaining in
popularity, and a number of U.S. and European companies had entered the market. When
World War I started and the supply of Juraso bathroom scales to the United States was cut off,
Marshall Field’s began looking to U.S. kitchen scale manufacturers for a replacement.
Marshall Field's new bathroom scale was designed by Mathias C. Weber, superintendent of
the Chicago Scale Company. Weber had come to the United States as a teenager in 1906 from
his native Hungary. His background as a scale mechanic helped to land him a job in New
York working on commercial scales for $16 per week. He soon developed a reputation within
the industry as a talented mechanic. He was even called on by the New York City Bureau of
Weights and Measures, at the age of 21, as a technical expert to give advice.
In 1914, Weber was hired by Chicago Scale Company -- Chicago Scale's president had
ordered a subordinate to hire "the best scale man in the country." Shortly after Weber started
his job at Chicago Scale, Marshall Field approached the company about creating a bathroom
scale to replace the Juraso.
