What is it? Set 388

[Rob H.]

I need some help with the fourth and fifth items in this set:

[kfvorwerk]

2239. Some sort of compass or candle gimbal? 2241. Safety attachment for the top of the roof to tie your harness into. 2243. I'm guessing it's for book binding. Karl

[Alexander Thesoso]

[Michael Kenefick]

2239: Ships lamp, always stays "up"? 2240: Brown Paper Bag? Lunch sack 2241: 2242: A door lock? 2243: 2244:

[Rob H.]

The last word in your guess is correct.

I've shown this to a few people and this is the most popular suggestion for it.

Rob

[Rob H.]

Sounds like a good use for it, hard to say if it's for tire chains or some other specific use, I did a patent search but didn't find anything.

Rob

[Rob H.]

Correct, it's a gimbaled lamp for a ship.

It's not a lunch sack but it is a brown paper bag, it has a very particular purpose.

Rob

[Markem]

2240 Luminary, you put sand and candle and line a walkway with them at Christmas time?

Mark

[GeorgeD]

2240: Burn bag for classified documents.

[Rob H.]

Correct, these are used by the government for when they burn old documents instead of shredding them.

Rob

[willshak]

Rob H. wrote the following:

2244 Looks like a slide hammer of sorts. Put the point on a spot where you wants to punch a hole. Holding the wooden top vertically, slide the big metal ring up and let it drop to drive the point into the material.

[Steve W.]

2239 - Ye olde ships lantern. Hung in the hold/below decks. Designed so the pitch and yaw didn't tip over the candle/lantern inside. Outer cage to keep heat away from other items. 2240 - Well locally that would be a small sized paper bag from the old Red/White food store chain, Also used as a decorative version of the old brown bag for your lunch... 2241 - Roof anchor to tie off on while working on a pitched roof. Wish MANY more of them were installed. Would make vent operations MUCH easier in the fire service... 2242 - Fence stretcher?

2243 - Looks somewhat like an old book binders clamp. Mounted so that you could clamp the stack of pages and sew the binding.

[Artemus]

Not to question the experts, but .... Why would a lamp holder that was hung as a pendulum need gimbals? The gimbals would always keep the lamps orientation relative to the protective cage the same, so they are redundant. The old timers were smarter than that.. Art

[Steve]

I need some help with the fourth and fifth items in this set:

2240 looks like an airplane barf bag to me :)

Steve R.

[PJMurphy]

Could the gimbal device (#1) have been used for a shop's clock?

An accurate clock was essential for calculating longitude. By fixing it to the ship, tilting action would cause the mechanism to vary the time, thus producing errors in navigation. The gimbal would allow the clock to remain in a set horizontal position, and allow it to remain accurate.

[PJMurphy]

EDIT: ship's clock, not shop's clock.

[anorton]

It could be really, really bad on a wooden ship to have the oil slosh out of the lamp past the burning wick. As long as the force on the lamp is alway perpendicular to the base, the oil will not slosh to the side. As you said, this would USUALLY be the case if you just hung the lamp on a rope (the rope exerts the force perpendicular to lamp base even when the lamp is swinging in a regular fashion). However if the ship suddenly lurches laterally, or if the lamp knocks into an object, then there is momentarily a component of force that is not perpendicular to the base and the oil could slosh around. The gimbal is not completely immune to these effects either, but it provides an extra degree of protection

Actually this is a very interesting and complicated physics problem where you can treat the gimbal lamp on a rope as a triple pendulum consisting of the rope, a rigid body (the cage), and the lamp on the gimbal. The motion and forces at the end due to acceleration at the top can be very chaotic. This video illustrates this:

here is a 1hr 20min MIT lecture if you want to understand it.

[willshak]

Or shop's click.

[DoN. Nichols]

2239) Looks like a container for an illuminating fire which is suspended from a chain. Perhaps oil-soaked reeds in the cup in the center?

The ball chain hanging from it in the first shot does not belong. :-)

2240) Well ... aside from being a paper bag folded flat for storage ... I suspect that it is a "burn bag" -- used in a place which handles classified materials when something is still classified, but needs to be disposed of. Things are collected in the burn bag in the security file cabinet until the right time, and it is then sent to the proper facility for secure destruction.

I have also seen bags printed for "Blast Mix" (Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil which make an explosive, as Tim McVeigh knew all too well.

2241) This looks like a fold-up safety warning -- the kind which might be put on a floor which has just been mopped and waxed, to warn that it is a slipping hazard for a while. 2242) This looks as though it is intended to tighten a chain binding a load in place. At a guess, a link at one end of the chain slips over the oval metal extension and is trapped there with the wing nut on the threaded stud. The chain extends along the handle, around whatever is being bound, and the other end connects to the hook after which the ratchet is used to tighten the chain around the bound load. 2243) Now this is a weird one. It looks: 1) As though one of the two cranks has been broken. 2) That it bolts down to a surface (perhaps a ship deck.) 3) That the cranks and screws below them are used to extend downward and clamp something to the deck. Perhaps a pair of lifeboats, perhaps a gangplank, or something similar. 4) Whatever it was used for -- it was not intended to be on an oriental rug as itis in the photo. :-) 2244) I don't know how much of the taper is a result of the angle of the photo and the use of a wide angle lens, but if the taper is not as extreme as it appears, I would suggest that this is the sort of thing carried around a park or other grounds to spear and pick up paper trash -- spent tickets, candy wrappers, and such. The length is about right for the task. The point is perhaps a bit too elaborate -- but perhaps someone got tied of his falling apart and decided to fix it for once and for all.

Now to see what others have suggested.

Enjoy, DoN.

P.S. Can you set things up so the guesses at the bottom of the page don't show up until the official answers have been released? I'd really not have them there until I have my answers posted. :-) (I'll actually read them before I got though those in the newsgroup -- but after I post this.

[Rich Grise]

"Page not found Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog What is it? does not exist."

? Thanks, Rich