This paper presents a new design for a multi-channel electrical mobility spectrometer which measures the lognormal size distribution and number concentration of aerosol particles in the size range 5-300 nm with a short response time. The spectrometer charges particles in the test sample by unipolar corona discharge, they are then classified into 16 channels by electrical mobility. Charged particles are detected in the channels by individual aerosol electrometers, giving an electrical mobility spectrum for the sample. The main aspect of the spectrometer design is a wedge-shaped classifier with flat electrodes. This allows a flow to be drawn from the classifier at 16 different levels/channels with minimal disturbance to the remaining flow, hence filter based aerosol electrometers can be used for detection. The varying field within the classifier caused by the wedge shape is advantageous to the classification and optimised through the selection of the wedge angle. Also presented is an alternative technique for inferring the lognormal size distribution of an aerosol from a measured electrical mobility spectrum. This involves using a theoretical model of the instrument to simulate the output mobility spectra for a large number of aerosol samples with lognormal size distributions. The resulting data library can be searched against a measured electrical mobility spectrum to find the corresponding size distribution. The experimental work presented in this paper is a first evaluation of this spectrometer and includes measurement of the classifier transfer functions, basic calibration of the charger, and finally testing the spectrometer's performance on some simple unimodal lognormal aerosol samples. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.