1001. Tesla coil



More excellent Tesla coil arcs can be seen here, and this site has some amazing arc photos as well.












1002. Battery terminal puller












1003. Target ball thrower, before clay pigeons they used to practice shooting glass target balls.




Below is a target ball that was posted on this site a while ago:












1004. Train order hoop, when a train wasn't scheduled to stop at a station but they needed to give the engineer new orders, they would attach them to this hoop and pass them to the train as it went by.

From this site:

Moving aboard the train at great speed, the trainman ran his arm through the hoop, pulled it out of the hand of the telegrapher, took the order, and threw the hoop down alongside the track. Injuries occurred when the telegrapher was slow to let go of the hoop. Occasionally the telegrapher was jerked down on his back. Likewise, the trainman sometimes suffered arm injuries.

The old train order hoop was replaced with the "Y" shaped train order stick. The telegrapher placed the order in a string and then threaded it around the stick. The telegrapher held the stick and the trainman took only the string with the order attached in a slip knot.

These were also used to pass mail to the train. A Y shaped order stick can be seen here.


From Jim Brown's collection.











1005. Piano tuner's voicing pliers, used to pierce the felt hammers to improve the tone. After a lot of use the felt gets compressed and doesn't sound like it should, if the hammers aren't properly maintained you could end up with something that sounds like a tack piano.
















1006. This is a watchmaker's wheel gauge. Gears in watches and clocks are referred to as wheels - toothed wheels. Before the era of interchangeability, each part was custom fit to each watch movement. If repairs needed to be made a wheel blank was obtained from a supplier and the watchmaker would then cut the required number of teeth into the blank. The watchmaker would put the damaged wheel into the gauge to tell the supplier what size he needed.






Close-up




Don't forget that next week I'll be posting on Wednesday morning.
































Don't forget that next week I'll be posting on Wednesday morning.
























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








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