Name that thing

posted Oct 31st 2009 8:00am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: contests

_guess_this_105_1

[Alan] over at HackedGadgets.com has been doing a “Name the Thing” contest where he occasionally posts an image and people try to figure out what it is. We’ve seen similar posts on some other web sites too. We usually don’t post them here because they’re not only not a hack, they’re usually not even projects. This one, however, caught our eye.

We apologize for posting this, without telling you what it is. The simplest explanation is that curiosity is getting the best of us. We were hoping that you guys could help out. What is this thing? Can we have two?

Comments [54]

tagged: name that thing

Reader Comments

Well it’s certainly an interresting contest this week.

Posted at 8:12 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by yonsje

First guess, a calculator. Second guess, maybe a frequency counter. Sure does have a lot of nixie tubes though.

Posted at 8:21 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by f8l_0e

A good source for nixie tubes?

no? Herm, how about a frequency counter?

Dan K

Posted at 8:23 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by Dan K

Probably a 50’s era calculator.

Posted at 8:25 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by ScooterSES

I think my first guess was right. It seems to be a Casio AL-1000 programmable calculator.

Posted at 8:29 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by f8l_0e

Obviously some kind of weighted device for keeping your papers on your desk.

Posted at 8:30 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by BIOS

It’s a programmable calculator, probably ca. 1970 to 1974. My father’s physics lab had one of similar construction made by Olivetti, which was able to run little programs saved on magnetic cards.

Posted at 8:32 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by localroger

Whatever it is… it’s pretty :p

Posted at 8:33 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by sly

A Boat Anchor???

Posted at 8:37 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by Rampage

F8l was right http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/casio_al-1000.html

Posted at 8:39 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by blizzarddemon

Ah, looking at the detail photos it could go as early as 1960; that circuit board they isolate is solid-state but doesn’t use IC’s. But it is definitely a programmable calc; that circuit board appears to be a small amount of core memory.

Posted at 8:42 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by localroger

blizzarddemon wins!

Posted at 8:44 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by localroger

that thing is so freakin sexy

Posted at 8:44 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by ACEdotcom

Looks like something the mafia would tie a victim to and drop them into the ocean. Is that whats meant by being green?

Posted at 8:48 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by hrpuffnstuff

It is absolutely a Casio AL-1000 Calculator. I have worked with these extensively.

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/casio_al-1000.html

The above link will direct you to a webpage all about the CASIO AL-1000 programmable calculator, created in 1967.

Peace!

Posted at 9:04 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by Michael V

Too late Michael V, already way ahead of you. : P

Posted at 9:11 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by blizzarddemon

I think this is a pile of electronic scrap

Posted at 9:13 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by ktosik

It’s the tuning controls for a television.

Posted at 9:35 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by Bob

That is the most bad-ass calculator I’ve ever seen! I wonder if they’d let me use it on my Physics test… =D

Posted at 9:36 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by josh

I’m thinking an electro-mechanical version of an Enygma Device

Posted at 10:00 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by The Steven

I think it’s an enigma

Posted at 10:05 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by Dub

1970s era telephone company clock/calendar display.

Posted at 12:13 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by PocketBrain

Looks very much like early Soviet nixie calculators. Check out this Iskra 12 one:

http://www.leningrad.su/museum/show_big.php?n=480

Posted at 12:27 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by tnt23

Yup, it’s a calculator…
look here
http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/toshbc1411.html

Posted at 12:40 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Physic.dude

It doesn’t look much like the enigma machine. (Yes, I’m aware that it’s been identified above)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Scherbius-1928-patent.png

The same picture is published in “The Codebreakers” by David Kahn which is mostly a history of encryption, but there are enough examples of actual encryption in there to learn from (like how to break some simple monoalphabetic and polyalphabetic ciphers).

The book is actually quite old but it’s still being published. It’s a thick tome and absolutely fascinating. I recommend the book because of its value to hack-minded individuals.

Posted at 12:43 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Sam

Ah; I thought the mspaint spray that blacked out the obvious giveaway (keypad) was actually part of the device – like some black fuzz or something.

Would have been way easier to blind guess if that was pointed out in advance… not that there was any problem figuring this one out…

Posted at 2:49 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by xrazorwirex

As someone who knows very little about electronic components, I must say that I am impressed with they general level of knowledge displayed regularly by you folks.

It’s always enlightening to read the comments here.

Kudos.

Posted at 3:38 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Patrick

I totally agree with Patrick. I love popping over to Hack a Day to see what new things the guys have found and what you have to say about them.

“Enlightening”? Absolutely!

Posted at 4:21 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Dave

IMHO you should have waited until the contest was over to satisfy your curiosity … you’re ruing the whole idea of that contest.

But nice thing, never seen it seen it was out of date way before i started to play with electronics … :)

Posted at 4:59 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by polossatik

wow.
12.3Kg (27lbs).

Posted at 5:11 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by arcnemisis

Flux Capacitor

It looks like some boring analog device used for signal conversion or modulation.

Posted at 5:27 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by tj

An old Arduino prototype? :P

Posted at 6:06 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by JB

As others have pointed out, it most definitely is a Casio AL-1000. You don’t need to know anything about what one of those is. All you need is the ability to compare the photo at the top of this post with the third photo on this page, which has already been linked to in earlier replies

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/casio_al-1000.html

“Guess the thing” competitions are only good if they’re photos of actual stuff the person setting the competition has, rather than random stuff found on the web.

Posted at 6:21 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Piku

Looks like the device I use to count my sheep.

Posted at 6:22 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by snorkle256

It’s that Casio calculator or another close model line like those people said. It does look like a computer from the S100 period.

Posted at 7:09 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by tj

i figured it was a calculator because of the nixie display and the wheel next to the keypad is the floating point ajustment (the ms paint spray is covering the keypad)

Posted at 8:44 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by jsngrimm

i knew it was a calculator
and its so pretty so reparable so simple so large
can i have it:)

Posted at 8:59 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by jadon

Can it handle a division by zero without bursting into flames?

Posted at 9:07 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by ChalkBored

Hey guys. Looks like there are lots of correct guesses here!

Hi Piku, the contest last week was something that was cracked open on my bench. :)
http://hackedgadgets.com/2009/10/24/name-the-thing-contest-104/

Posted at 9:36 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Alan Parekh

binary calculator

Posted at 9:39 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by overlord00

14 Nixies! And I’ll bet they still work, too. Magnetic core is nice to work with too.

I had the innards out of a calculating scale that looked quite similar, but I doubt it would be S-100 as most of these manufacturers used in-house arrangements.

HP once made a similar desktop mini-computer like this that would still rip the trunk off a large elephant, weight and capability.

Posted at 10:16 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Roly

Does anyone know the answer to 104 posted by Alan above?

Posted at 12:02 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by jproach

Nixie display is very cool. But what about stroboscopic display?

Posted at 12:20 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by Sergei Frolov

i should have looked here before i entered the contest. since it has 14 nixie tubes i thought it was one of the old airport arrival/departure signs. although airport signs were alphanumeric. oh well, i’ll just have to enter the next contest that offers credit at adafruit.

Posted at 2:25 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by inginear

The close-ups of the magnetic core memory cells on the vintagecalculators page is really cool.

Posted at 3:42 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by M4CGYV3R

S100 is waaaaaaaay later. That’s microprocessor stuff. This thing is full of discrete components.

Posted at 6:21 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by sgf

Yea the magnetic core memory is bad ass. stroboscopic display is also bad ass. The immense efforts it must have took to make theses machines back then. The AL-1000 must have cost a lot back then. “The portable 27lb calculator”

Posted at 7:35 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by Mic

well since we know know what it happens to be. i still want to guess. is it the remote control for sputnik? Farnsworth doomsday device type 3? Polish cell phone circa 1955? Canadian easy bake oven? Iranian magnatron circa 2007? or my personal favorite, prototype for one laptop per child winner?

Posted at 7:54 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by silvershovler

It is an old machine to scan rats. The rat would be placed on the metal pad. The cables underneath it would send electronic impulses through the rat’s body to scan it. This would make it possible to find out what diseases it might carry and if it ate your cheese. When all the little light bulbs had gone off, the process would be completed. The photo-scan would then remain impressed on the red slides at the back, which was handy for they could be ket in a folder for future reference on the rat’s health. Unfortunately, as a side effect the machine would fry the rat, as the picture shows. So it quickly fell into disuse.

Posted at 9:07 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by Piero

magnetic core memory is cool. It just takes up too much space. It was used to store data for the moon missions computers. They wired in the bits because things like eprom were not available. If the wire passed through a core it was a 1 , no core a 0 and the entire program the computers ran were encoded that way.

Now imagine when you find a program error and have to rewire several thousand wires :)

Posted at 12:41 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by cgmark

@cgmark, That’s not how magnetic core memory works. You might be thinking of rope core memory.

Posted at 4:08 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Ben

is it just me or are they using this hack-a-day new post word for word…

http://diynow.nl/name-that-thing

Posted at 4:24 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Gumbi

LOL I actually played with a working one of these once… About 1988 and it was located in an old cupboard in a maths room, during year 12 studies. University the following year,

Posted at 8:15 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Paul

is that some sort of cyber-punk accordian?

Posted at 11:35 pm on Nov 15th, 2009 by niccohel