Need help! What is this thing??
A while back, one of my father’s customers was throwing out some junk with his dump trailer. My father noticed an old wooden box as well as some WWII era suitcases and, knowing I had an interest for that stuff, saved them from the dump and took them home.
The suitcases were empty, but we opened up the wooden box and found, buried in a bunch of hay, this odd-looking thing:
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The only marking it has on it is "Jackson Electrical Instrument Co., Dayton Ohio". No serial numbers, dates, or anything else.
I am assuming it is some kind of photography instrument, since we found some burned & curled up photograph film among the hay (it was all black, damaged, and ripped up. Trust me, I tried to see what the photos were of). It may also have been video film, but it was too damaged to tell.
There’s a two-prong plug on the side that, upon disassembling it with a screwdriver, I found connected to a square shaped coil that wrapped around the inside.
I apologize if this is in fact NOT a WWII relic. I honestly have no idea what it is, and figured I’d try to maybe narrow down the options.
Any ideas? Googling "Jackson Electical Instrument Co." just gets me a bunch of rock guitars and radios.
