It's not a trick question where I can post the answer later. I really don't know. This belonged to my father-in-law. He was a WWII vet and worked in the communications field. He must have had at least 300 glass insulators at one time with many of them having the wood threaded insert.
This particular item is something that none in the family seemed to know what it was used for.
My guess is a wax cylinder recording machine. (and/or player)
Looks like a variable resistance coil. Perhaps for tuning a crystal radio. And as I look at your picture more, you may have the entire crystal radio. Go to Wiki to learn more.
Compare to this diagram:
My wife says that after your post she recalls her father telling her exactly that. It took your post and link to jog her memory. She thinks she knows where the headset is located in storage.
He's got some pretty interesting stuff. She showed me his photo album a few months ago. In the album he has a pic of him and 3 other guys during the war. One of them has the name scrolled below as "Shoeless Joe". I'm assuming the baseball player. If I can find the pic I will scan and post. Some really neat stuff!
Thanks Dave!
It would be interesting to see if you could get it to work and tune in a couple of stations!
The real key will be if the crystal is still with the radio. After that cleaning all the electrical contacts, etc, and it should be able to pick up local AM stations. Learned about these from my dad back in the 50's and made a couple myself.
The galena crystal goes in the little round tube. You're picture's kind of fuzzy but it looks like yours might be missing.
You tune in a station by fiddling the cat's whisker around on the crystal until a signal comes in.
Dave, I was going to say some sort of "tuning coil". My dad could have ID'd that in about 3 seconds.
Crystal Radios Are Amazing
All the power required (no batteries necessary) is being transmitted to you from the AM antenna. Once tuned to a frequency the power from the broadcast station is sufficent to drive the headphones. What is needed however is a long antenna to gather in enough signal and power.
Paul in PA
Looks like a blu-line machine i used to run, many, many years ago.
