IT’S FOR MEASURING…

New technologies need all kinds of things that seem obvious in retrospect – and were anything but in the moment. Before there were passenger trains there was no need for standard time; most places had a clock that was set to “local time”. So new things need standards.

And thus to our object. It needed to be robust – to resist such things as temperature changes – and to have a long life. It needed to allow workers in widely separate places to build it to a high degree of reproducibility. Its patent application was placed in 1891, and it was accepted as an international standard in 1908. This example was most likely made before World War I.

We know you can Google, but where’s the fun it that? Tell us what you think it is. The correct answer – and/or the most creative – will be published in the next issue.