We have a collection of old drafting equipment in the office that we bring out for display now and then. Most of it is fairly easy to identify but this one has us stumped. The case is labelled as Kern Aarau.
We're fairly certain that it's used for drawing dashed lines, but we cannot figure out how it would be used. I can't find any other examples of it either.
I believe it is a drafting (mapping) tool to draw different line styles. It would probably have used in conjunction with something like carbon paper to leave marks or something sticky to "pick up" the coatings on media before it was used to make a photo positive of a map. The stuff I remember was orange on mylar. Let me do a little looking to see what I can find.
About half way down this page you will find something similar with the little wheels from a different maker:
http://www.mathsinstruments.me.uk/page8.html
The orange coated mylar was a K & E product called "Scribe Coat" and such a tool would not work on it.
Scribe Coat was used in the negative engraving process and we used , in the better days, an AstroScribe 2000 engraving tool with sapphire tipped engraving blades and needles. The earlier gravers were by K&E and used 78rpm record player needles sharpened to precise tolerances to get the line widths that we needed.
All the above is why I LOVE my computer!!
Richter drafting tool
Slightly different than yours, but.....
Don't know, but it reminded me of the old Spirograph I used to have.
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It's for ink drafting and is used to draw various types of broken lines. The longer piece is the ink pen with adjustable nibs for various line widths. The disk control the up and down of the pen and contact on the media, probably linen. The disk may fit on the post at the end of the spring that holds disk in place. :'(
