What is it? Set 283

1609. Radiator cap from and old car (30's or before). I bet someone else here will know which one. Karl

1611: most of a roller bearing (all but the outer race)

1614: Maybe a cathetometer - sort of a short distance telescopic very low power microscope used to examine something, such as the height of a column of mercury, from across the lab. In this case, the "thing" you are looking at has a scale attached... Joel in Florida

I thought that 1614 was a surveyor's level but now I'm thinking you might be right about it being a cathetometer, I'll send an email to the owner and see what he has to say.

Rob

1609 - It would be really, really nice to have an enlarged view of this, so as to make out the markings engraved on the front glass. I'm guessing these may give the item away, since an enlargement is missing. Anyhow, it seems to be an indicating device of some sort. I'm guessing, for no particularly good reason, that it has a nautical application, possibly in ascertaining distance of a log line or something similar. 1610 - Seems to be a tool for levering something a short distance, but with great force. Maybe it's railroad related, such as to manually move the points of a switch that is otherwise uncooperative. 1611 - This looks to be a roller (maybe timken?) bearing of hefty size with the rods welded on. It could form the hub of some small amusement ride. It could also be a part of a turntable for, say, a large television set, but the bearing looks designed for radial loads more than thrust loads, which is opposite of what a TV turntable would encounter. 1612 - Probably a gauge to measure the width of some relatively thin things, measured on what appears to be a logarithmic scale (a linear increase in dimension leading to an exponential increase in gauge number). The chain is to keep it handy at...well, whatever it's used at. So, what's measured? No real ideas, although I'll take a stab and guess small metal extrusions of some sort--channels or I-beams or some such. 1613 - Self-service tiki torch check. ("Please check all tiki torches at the door. Thank you.") 1614 - My guess is that it's to measure windage due to gyroscopic effects for a rifled gun. My guess is probably not correct, though.

It's a tough set. Now to see other people's thoughts.

Perhaps its used with a reflecting galvanometer? Jon

• * Anything being cooked a second time needs a hot oven.

I'm not so sure that this isn't some homemade device. The body of it looks strangely similar to a circa 1920 Brass Microscope:

--riverman

Found it. Its in this document on page 84. Can anyone read german?

--riverman

Microscope:

>

Near as I can tell most of the text is just description with nothing about purpose. "Ablese-mikroskop" is apparently commonplace German usage but it's not in my regular dictionary and I don't know where my technical German dictionary is hiding.

Ablesen means to "read off" (perhaps to "tell by looking")-- probably refers to the microscope having a calibrated scale.

Northe

Microscope:

>>

Sounds like a cathetometer to me. It talks about measuring the precise attitude of an object, and that seems to mean its elevation angle.

By changing objective lenses, it says you can have objective widths of

5, 9, or 48 cm. I don't know what the mean by the objective width.

It can be precisely adjusted in height from 34 to 55 cm.

Microscope:

>>>

That certainly looks the part.

Excellent! Just added the link to the answer page, thanks for the help in nailing this one.

Rob

Why wouldn't one Ernst Leitz Wetzlar optical instrument look like another? The company made a lot of different optical instruments (and various bits of it, like Leica Camera, still exist).

But its presence there makes it a lab instrument rather than a surveying instrument. Also, Google helpfully informs me that Abelese-Mikroskop means "Reading Microscope".