Rooting around in my old diabetes box o’ junk, I found this brochure and thought you’d all get a kick out of it.
I may have had one of these things, but I don’t remember for sure.
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My first meter was probably the next generation after this one. Mine was an Ames Glucometer II and had a cover/lid that flipped down to cover the screen & buttons. The strips were insanely expensive, $99 for a bottle of 100. As a poor college student with no insurance I think I bought one bottle and that was the end of my BG testing for the next 10+ years.
My first meter was similar to that except instead of rinsing the strip with water, I had to wipe it with a cotton ball. And insert it after the timer counted. I also remember the strips being a dollar each, which back then was a lot of money. My insurance paid 90% so I was lucky to be paying 10 cents per test.
But the meter was too big to carry around so I only tested when I was home.
You could use those strips without a meter, by comparing the strip to a color chart, which I did sometimes. But they were never accurate by any measure.
You might know that you were really high or really low. So there was some benefit to it.
It wasn’t till exactech came out that I was testing regularly because I could carry it around.
Boy, does that take me back. I wish now that I had kept my first meter. I was one of the first to have gotten one back in 1980. It was I think called the Ames Meter. It had a reflectence meter, plugged in, and required washing the strip. The latter was a pain because when I traveled I had to take a wash bottle.
Mike
You are thinking of Chemstrips which did not require washing in water, just wiping.
The Ames strips were “fuzzy” and I really had to rinse in water.
In 1982 I started with Chemstrips but sometimes they were out of stock and I used the Ames strips instead.