Saturday, June 14, 2008

1326. A ship's log, used with a rotator to show the distance traveled by a ship, patent number 263,936:
















1327. Haven't been able to find one like it on the web, guesses include:
-a candle lighter and snuffer
-a rushlight
-blacksmith tongs

Update: I just got an email from the owner of this device in which he answered a couple of questions that were asked by readers, he said that the cone is hollow and the that there are two holes in the other end.





















1328. A coin counter:


Turning the handle causes both the large horizontal disc and the smaller vertical disc to rotate:


















1329. A sales tax token, as explained on this site:
Merchants had to pay sales tax to the state on the total amount of sales made by the merchant during each day's sales. You can imagine that if the sales tax rate is 3% and a child buys a 10c piece of candy there is no way to collect the three-tenths of one cent. If you rounded down that meant that the merchant could not collect anything for the tax. If you rounded up the state was gaining 7 tenths of a cent on every 10 cent sale. You can see that if the merchant sold 100 pieces of candy he was loosing 30 cents a day in tax revenues to the state, so the token was born. This allowed the merchant to take 11 cents for the first piece of candy and give change back in mills. The next time you wanted to buy a 10c candy you could present the merchant with the 10c and a token and complete the transaction. This allowed the merchant to collect the sales tax on each transaction.


























1330. A Thomsom alternating ammeter:

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1331. A door hinge mortise cutter, used to make slots in the door and frame for the hinges:

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To submit photos, click on the profile link at the upper right to find my email address.





















































Last week's set is seen below, click here to view the entire post:







Black Ops Pro Tips
More discussion and comments on these photos can be found at the newsgroup rec.puzzles.