This week's collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this strange contraption above - can you guess what it is for?
As usual, there are two prizes this week: the first person who comes up with the correct guess and the person who has the funniest yet ultimately wrong guess will win T-shirts from the Neatorama Shop. You must submit your entries before the answer is revealed at the What is it? Blog.
Contest rules are simple: place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please. You can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URL or web link - doing so will forfeit your entry.
For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!
Update 12/21/09 - the answer is: This wheel was intended to be placed on the counter of a store, according to the patent it could be used in different ways:Suppose, for instance, that a customer wishes to invest a nickel in trade with the merchant who has a wheel of the kind described. The customer drops his nickel in the slot and it passes into one of the pockets of the wheel, revolving the wheel in the manner described, until the nickel is deposited and the wheel stops with the hand indicating say, No. 1. Then the customer gets any article valued at a nickel which he desires and which the merchant has to sell. If the hand should indicate No. 2, the customer would be entitled to two articles... and so on.
If the wheel is to be used for a discount wheel, instead of the marks 1, 2 and 3, the rim is marked with numbers indicating different percentages, usually from one to twenty-five percent, and after he has purchased a bill of goods, the merchant hands him a coin which the customer drops into the wheel as above described, and when the wheel stops, the hand indicates a certain percentage, which represents the discount the merchant must deduct from his bill of goods already purchased.
Patent number 538,916
Nobody got the correct answer, so congratulations to John The Third for the funniest guess, "Base Decider," which made all of us here ROFL :)
hahahahah!
+1 internets to you, good sir.
It only works for future travel though and only one minute at a time. Dr. Howe sold the device to incredulous investors in 1889, and then dissapeared. He is rumored to be arriving in Uraguy in 2014.
Even a broken binary clock is right 01 times a day.
wheels. On insertion of a coin the wheels turned and the payout was determined by the number on the wheel that landed at the arrow/area.
They were used in places where gambling wasn't legal. These games would offer an opportunity to win prizes instead of (or in addition to) money. Sometimes the prizes would be exchangable for cash, like 'Free replays' on pinball machines in the 60's that could be traded for money with an operator. Other times there would be a product like a gumball vended, so the operator could claim it as an honest vending machine. Inside, the gumball was hollowed out with a little slip of paper. You would compare the number on the paper with a chart, if it matched a certain number you'd win a prize.