What Is It? game 165



It's once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Can you make up something interesting?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: dj2kenne was the first with the correct answer: the object is a TV antenna rotator. A lot of people knew the answer, and a lot of people made up great meanings for the letters N-E-S-W-N -you really should go read them all! The prize for the funniest answer goes to amanderpanderer, who said:
Back when the internet was a more clearly defined series of non-searchable tubes for conveying information, people were bombarded with information shooting out of the pneumatic delivery devices and into their offices, living rooms and school dorms. Being less savvy at identifying the sorts of information being sent to them, internet users often relied on external devices like this one to help them distinguish between the relevant and irrelevant materials being delivered. This is the 1953 InternetIdentificationIdentifyer, or III, in stunning bakelite brown. This device sat near the pnuematic exit and served to classify and catagorize the material presented.

The catagories are:
News, Entertainment, Sex, Wikipedia, and (of course) Neatorama.

Now we have RSS feeds, so I never miss a Neatorama posting. Ah, progress!

T-shirts will go out to both winners.

I expect this to be only the display part of an electronic compass, N E S W N corresponds to the main 4 Cardinal directions...

Who Are These Kids? 2Xl
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Control box for an outdoor, rotating TV antenna. The dial indicates the current direction and is driven by a motor at the same time as the motor on the antenna. Toggle at the bottom rotates both the antenna and the dial.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Maybe it is a kind of input device for entering a one of the four Cardinal directions into a navigational device or into a kind of simulator device...

Who Are These Kids? 2XL
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
commenter above got it, this is a control box for an outdoor rotating antenna. It goes 360 and back to N, at which point you have to rotate back through the directions, and wind back up at N.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Now with T-shirt selection:

Control box for an outdoor, rotating TV antenna. The dial indicates the current direction and is driven by a motor at the same time as the motor on the antenna. Toggle at the bottom rotates both the antenna and the dial.

I Heart Robots, Black, M
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
dj2kenne is right... control box for a rotating outdoor antennea, generally tower mounted. the lever in the middle controls rotation direction (won't do a full circle), but I'm not sure what the two buttons on the end do.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Pretty easy to guess, although I've only ever seen the round dial models. My parents still use theirs.

Wacky answer? It's a steampunk GPS.

And if I were ever to win a shirt, I would want the thesaurus one in Medium.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Yeah, well I actually used one regularly as a lad.

It was at grandpa's house.

When we needed to rotate the antenna at my house, I had to go outside to turn the antenna pole while somebody watched the tee vee and yelled "GOOD!"

neener.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Funny answer is a teen plugs it in when having an important conversation with thier parents and it lets them know which way the wind is blowing.

N-no
E-extermely unlikely
W-we will see
S-sure when pigs ply
N-nononononono

Come to the darkside we have cookies xxl pink
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Back when the internet was a more clearly defined series of non-searchable tubes for conveying information, people were bombarded with information shooting out of the pneumatic delivery devices and into their offices, living rooms and school dorms. Being less savvy at identifying the sorts of information being sent to them, internet users often relied on external devices like this one to help them distinguish between the relevant and irrelevant materials being delivered. This is the 1953 InternetIdentificationIdentifyer, or III, in stunning bakelite brown. This device sat near the pnuematic exit and served to classify and catagorize the material presented.

The catagories are:
News, Entertainment, Sex, Wikipedia, and (of course) Neatorama.

Now we have RSS feeds, so I never miss a Neatorama posting. Ah, progress!

Thesaurus, XXL Grey
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Well I suppose if I would actually read others responses I would have put something original other than what my actual guess was......now no inspiration has come to me. It flew the coop.....sad.

but here is a shot.

Radio brainwave detector......

med, light blue....wehn life gives you mold.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
It's the controller for a radio direction finder. The dial shows the direction the antenna is pointing. The user would listen for the signal in question while turning the antenna until the strongest signal was received.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
It's a Lost Island tracking device.
They had some problem with the brown case, so the release had to be delayed... a bit.

Wizard of Oz, Short Version - Ladies Fit T-Shirt, Large, Military Green. :)
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Well, since I can't be original in my answer, I will be educational!

As others have said, it's an old-style TV Antenna rotator control box.

The reason it has 2 N(orth) positions is because it would spin probably ~370 degrees and hit a stop, this to avoid winding the antenna cable up.

How it worked:
Inside the box was a geared motor with the dial and a rheostat attached to it. The control lever would power the motor in the desired direction until you got the dial where you wanted it.
In the antenna drive unit there was also a (much larger) motor and a matching rheostat.
When you changed the dial position, the rheostats would no longer have matched resistance, allowing current to flow, which triggered a relay providing power to the motor.
Once the motor had turned to the correct location, the rheostats would match again, stopping the current flow and releasing the relay.

On second though, this style may have controlled the rotator motor directly, with the dial being controlled by the slave motor.

The later styles that had a large dial on the control box simply had the rheostat on the back of the dial.

The comment about changing the controller and then watching the antenna move implies a delayed reaction that you would find if the antenna motor was the slave. This was the case with the later styles, but I don't know if they were talking about this style.

For whiz-bang marketing, I would build it as I first described! The second option might be cheaper to build but wouldn't have the "high-tech" pizazz I would expect from that era.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Ahhh...Great find!
The ever elusive 'Ambiguous Lie Detector'

Attach wires to the perp...ask question, the machine tells you what it "thinks" about the answer.

N = "NO !" (2 N's...see how this thing was a tad biased)
S = "Somewhat"
E = "Evidently"
W = "Whatever"

It took a lot of specialized training to become an expert operator of this device.

Pink Freud
Large

p.s. Man, I gotta win me a Pink Freud shirt......!!!!!
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
The first game system, the child holds the device in their hands and toggles the switch to match the direction they are facing. If they are correct they hear a ding! Riviting!

Look out shroedinger's cat - lrg - blk
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Most of you all are close but not quite there- this was a device for rotating an antenna but since this was the canadian version, the antenna was in a fixed position on the roof and the device rotated the whole house instead.
protect your nuts 2 xl
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Proof of concept for the first interactive "Tom-Tom" GPS guided electric car.You moved the switch back and forth to steer. Since this was the 1956 teenager's model, it also told you to get a haircut and get a job.
protect your nuts,2xl
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
This was a dampening system for a prometheus drive GM was working on. If the two articles were somehow ever seperated, the drive would start spinning out of control and lose all stability.
Protect your nuts 2 xl
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
The 1930's prop for trying to sell "Wheel of Fortune" to the networks. (The clue was "This new game" and the solution was "No EaSy WiN") Sadly, Pat Sajak was not yet born and TVs were not yet found in the home.

Pink Freud- XXL please.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
The astronmer's first rough draft at modeling the solar system using the planets Neptune, Earth, Saturn, Whatchamacallit and Nancy.

"Come to the Dark Side" - XXL, please.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Must bt the electronic Magic 8-Ball that Julie Rivers used to answer me when I asked her out in high school.

N- Never
E- Ewwww!
S- Shut up
W- What? Are you nuts??
N- No Way

Pink Freud- XXL
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
to Scott Mayfield - they are not buttons on the bottom the finger stops - you put your index finger against the outside edge of them while using your thumb to work the lever. It keeps you from pushing the remote box off the table when moving the toggle lever.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
It is an early spell-checker. Here we see it correcting the spelling of the word "news", a task that it could easily do by Wednesday.

T: If you're not part of the solution 2x
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
It's a control box for changing the direction of your TV antenna atop your house. The antenna had a motor to reorient it to different directions for better signal reception. This box controlled the motor.

If I win, I'd like a velociraptor skull t-shirt, please, in men's x large, for my 20 year old son.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
My first idea was that it's a HuffDuff, a high frequency direction finder (HF/DF), used in WW2 to triangulate and pinpoint the position of moving enemy radio transmitters (that is, radio transmitters on German U-boats).

It was featured prominently in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Of course Wikipedia shows that those machines looked way more complicated, so the antenna finder in the other comments are more probable.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Login to comment.
Click here to access all of this post's 57 comments
Email This Post to a Friend
"What Is It? game 165"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More