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.
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.