I worked on this one many years ago - it was for reading domestic water meters from outside the building. There was a coil in an epoxy block fixed on the wall, with a cable down to the meter. All the wheels (which normally moved all those little needles) moved rotary wipers. The positions were read by a chip which was powered up by the first part of the pulse train from the reader placed on the coil. The meter number (hard-wires) was part of the data stream.

Just to show that it's possible!
Good luck!

Richard