Ah, dang it! I hate not knowing what something is. I can’t figure it out.
Interestingly, though, while I was searching, I came across this strange photo claiming that it was a woman in the 1930s going through an attitude adjustment program. I thought…WTF?
Snopes did a fact check on it but they never said anything about it being a joke. Luckily, I was able to find a 1937 Life magazine article showing that it was all just a hoax that took place in Budapest. Whew! I knew we had it bad back then but that would have been over the top. [source]
CC... found a couple sites that had everything patented on that day in the UK & USA but nothing like the gizmo posted could be found. My first thought was that it was a device used by someone trying to tune a multi-stringed musical instrument like a harp but it looks too awkward for that plus the cone shaped knob at one end is mystifying to say the least. Then I thought it had something to do with weaving but cant see that working.
I think it fits into something. Neat piece and hope it’s worth a few bucks.
(Feb 26, 2019 08:48 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: CC... found a couple sites that had everything patented on that day in the UK & USA but nothing like the gizmo posted could be found. My first thought was that it was a device used by someone trying to tune a multi-stringed musical instrument like a harp but it looks too awkward for that plus the cone shaped knob at one end is mystifying to say the least. Then I thought it had something to do with weaving but cant see that working.
SS may have discovered an item that even experts on Antiques Roadshow might be hard-pressed to identify.
Yeah, a harp or other musical instrument... The hooks having something to do with keeping wires or strings from getting tangled, or rods separated, crossed my mind -- but it likewise appears clumsy or significantly inadequate for that. The pesky thing lacking a handhold impedes the desire to construe it as a tool as much as the lack of a design for mounting or tethering undermining it as a holder for whatever _X_.
A setup for wind chimes? The hooks just don't look right for hanging a one dimensional sequence of tinklers on -- plus, once again no convenient appendage or framework to facilitate hanging it.
If it's pointed vertically and the hooks are distributed in a variety of directions, there's still no enlightenment or eureka moment.
Quote:I think it fits into something. Neat piece and hope it’s worth a few bucks.
Replacement part estranged from its larger intended.
stryderFeb 27, 2019 12:41 AM (This post was last modified: Feb 27, 2019 12:43 AM by stryder.)
(Feb 25, 2019 07:51 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: The other day, though, I found an odd thing, and nobody seems to know what it is. The only markings on it is a patent date of November 13, 1928.
Looking at the image, the hooks all move in one direction, the same direction as the "arrowed" end of the beads (A visible clue for anyone arranging threads/wires into the correct positions). The beads are colour coordinated suggesting a binary application (for separating odds and evens. The hooks sizes are rather larger and cumbersome for straight forwards yarn which would suggest something of higher circumference (braided yarn or wire or even asbestos), however the hooks being made of copper both implies it's something that shouldn't be tarnished but isn't so strong as to potentially bend the copper hook. The beads themselves just act as separators, the nature of their shape is to stop any sliding of the particular material from getting caught between the bead and the hooks interior.
I'd query as to whether the copper hooks have a rotation pivot around the axis the beads are connected or if they are fixed. If they rotate then it would likely mean that you would have 8 black hooks up and 8 yellow(?) hooks down arrangement to keep the lines separated.
It doesn't appear to be apparatus associated with rope making as most using a radial rotation die as opposed to a linear weaving arrangement, however due to the size of being only 16 potential feeds it would only apply it's a small part to a larger process (if indeed weaving).
The only other conclusion potentially drawn was a tool to separate telephone or telegraph wires during any maintenance, the problem however is that copper is conductive so it wouldn't necessarily make sense to use something that could short connections.
I'd suggest taking a further look at it under a microscope if you get the change to look for any paths of wear and tear or even fibres.
(Okay so I might of just recently completed yet another Sherlock Holmes computer game... )
Just a thought ..... if I remember correctly, I seem to recall seeing a tool similar to this being used to tightened women’s corsets. However can’t find it on internet. Does that conical knob unscrew? Was thinking it could be a universal corset tightener (up to 16 strings). Regardless if used for corsets or not I think its use is for tightening laces.
(Feb 27, 2019 04:16 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Just a thought ..... if I remember correctly, I seem to recall seeing a tool similar to this being used to tightened women’s corsets. However can’t find it on internet. Does that conical knob unscrew? Was thinking it could be a universal corset tightener (up to 16 strings). Regardless if used for corsets or not I think its use is for tightening laces.
I had the same thought, but couldn't find anything to support it either.
Oh, well. Maybe I’ll just toss it my glove box and ask that guy to bring it to his next meeting. I highly doubt that it’s worth anything. It was just pure curiosity.
I do have to tell you guys about this one sale that I went to years ago, though. It was huge shop that looked like the inside of Cern. Most everything was above my pay grade but it was really interesting. I asked what it was all about. The lady said that her father was a famous scientist. She told me that his name was Ken Shoulders and that he was an absolute genius. She said that she didn’t understand any of it but that he was working on things like anti-gravity, cold fusion, and free energy. Well, that really got my attention. She said some of the contraptions were going for hundreds of thousands and that she was donating some of them to his collaborators.
Quote:Shoulders had a 4,000-square-foot laboratory, a fully equipped machine shop, and two trailers full of scientific equipment, some of it custom-built.
"The lab ended up being bigger than the house," Meade wrote. "It was beautiful; he could build things that Lawrence Livermore laboratory couldn’t."
Meade and her brother are liquidating most of it, and the equipment has been packed into 36 large crates. Interested parties may send an e-mail to New Energy Times, and we will forward it to the family. [source]
When I got home, I looked him up. There was a lot of interesting information about him. I’m not sure but I don’t think that he had any formal education. One article said that he was a crackpot and a fraud that had persuaded a rich chicken farmer to fund his work. There was also a book about how the 60s counterculture had shaped the personal computer industry. It was called "What the Dormouse Said…" by John Markoff.
Excerpt…
One day, an unusual character walked through the door. Ken Shoulders was the kind of unschooled scientific genius that Rosen loved. Later, he would say that in the early days there were no required skills, you just had to be smart. That described Shoulders, who bubbled with wild ideas at an astounding rate. Before coming to SRI, he had worked at MIT as a technician. Sometime later, he was informally voted SRI researcher most likely to build a perpetual-motion machine.
In 1958, a year before the invention of the integrated circuit, Shoulders told Rosen that he thought he could create a new class of electronic device: a machine that would exist in a vacuum and would be made of two materials, molybdenum and aluminum oxide. He had come west with a dream of making time triodes—microscopic switches—using the same process that later became commonplace for making semiconductors. Shoulder’s goal was to make triodes that would be no larger than one micron in size and make millions of them at a time using electron beams to etch patterns in exotic materials.
Rosen had had plenty of experience in electronics, and as he listened to Shoulders sketch out his dream, he decided the idea wasn’t a completely crackpot scheme, even though there were no existing methods for making computer chips, or doing things in parallel, or using resist or acids to etch circuits. Rosen went to his own boss, Jerry Now, who told him that everyone else Shoulders had talked to about his idea thought the technician was crazy.
Like I said, it’s fun and interesting. Oh, and I did pick up one thing from his estate. I scored a really nice industrial drill press. I’m going to use it to make log vases for my girlfriend’s daughter’s wedding.
Thanks for trying everyone! I appreciated your efforts. If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.
(Feb 25, 2019 07:51 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I love estate sales. I find some pretty cool things and I meet all kinds of interesting people. There’s this one man that I’ve ran into several times. He’s a character. He would dominate in Trivia. He loves to talk, and he knows a lot about history, but there was this unusual looking brass cart, and nobody could figure out what it was for. It was driving me nuts. He said that he meets once a week with a group of older men and that he always starts it off with a trivia question. They love it, he said. He promised that he would ask them if they knew what it was. He said that he wouldn’t forget, and the next time that he saw me, he’d tell me. I was able to figure it out within a few minutes, though. It was an antique Chinese noodle cart.
Given and accuracy of the items construction it suggest a gauge type device, however, the wooden construction detracts from that aspect, more so in the height of the industrial metals age.
possibly some type of profesional assistance devise for a tailor
it would need to not be in water or wet and require repeated conformity.
such dynamics are inconsistent with wooden devices outside tool making.
in the early 20th century patents were equal to facebook profiles
everyone had to have one.
Okay. I have another one. Does anyone know what this is?
Guy died and his sister thinks that it may be a part to a 50 foot 1950s wooden sailboat that he was restoring. He had to let the sailboat go before he died because he wasn’t able to finish it. It’s solid brass.
Feb 26, 2019 05:27 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 26, 2019 05:27 PM by Secular Sanity.)
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