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Bought this at a household sale because it looks like a cylinder phonograph. While it has what appear to be electrical components, it also has a spring-wound motor (crank missing). Any thoughts as to what it is would be greatly appreciated.

At first glance it looks like it might be some sort of home made transcribing machine for cylinders. It looks very similar to machines used to for transferring and archiving recordings as an Mp3 file. Though, what baffles me is the fact that all of the electrical parts look to be very old. Maybe it is some sort of electrical Dictaphone?

-Steve

Does it have vacuum tubes? If so then you can look them up and get an idea as to what they were for. Most likely they would be for amplification.

"Eingang" translates to "input", so some sort of a recording device makes sense.

Are those two black cylinders with yellow bands (middle, right side) electromagnets? If so then maybe it was a crude, early attempt to record magnetically. The Germans had already perfected this technology by the end of WWII, maybe this was an earlier experiment, or an experiment by a hobbyist after the war?

I don't think any cylinder machine ran at 78RPM's, so the regulator was likely reused from something else.

I am certain this is an early wirephoto machine, hand constructed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirephoto

Notice the mandrel does not taper and it has a clamp along it to hold the photographic paper. It is missing the photocel and of course the light tight cover.

I think we commonly call it a FAX machine today.

Very interesting...thanks for your replies.

Is it possible that this machine was a receiving machine for wirephotos? The coils would make sense for actuating a printing mechanism...

The spring motor might have come from a gramophone: notice the speed control with '78' marked on it.

A couple of the sockets in back are marked "Heizung" (heating): I'm not sure what function they had.

Bill

Lucius1958 wrote:Is it possible that this machine was a receiving machine for wirephotos? The coils would make sense for actuating a printing mechanism...

The spring motor might have come from a gramophone: notice the speed control with '78' marked on it.

A couple of the sockets in back are marked "Heizung" (heating): I'm not sure what function they had.

Bill

Wirephoto machines did not make prints- they used a light cell to make a photographic negative that had to be wet developed and printed. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LetlcmqZFyA[/youtube]