A completely solid state photoelectric pulse initiator for electric utility meter telemetry and recording systems includes a low power CMOS digital integrated circuit (I.C.) flip-flop output circuit for directly generating output pulses in response to the rate of rotation of a meter movement. A pulse rate dividing circuit is provided by a presettable divide-by-N CMOS digital I.C. in one preferred form for electronically varying the ratio of the output pulses relative to the input pulses. A simplified data magnetic recording receiver circuit is capable of being supplied recorder drive current directly from the Q and Q logic outputs of the output flip-flop to produce non-return-to-zero (NRZ) data pulse recording.