Can you identify this instrument
 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...ift%20Inst.JPG

Do you know what this instrument is and what it was used in?

Do we get any clues?

G

Apparent wind gauge from some kind of sailing vessel?

is there anything on the back?





gs

Looks like a marine wind guage.

Which could also be a wind gauge from an airship

INCLINOMETER..
 

Looks like an inclinometer, used by ships to determine how far they are heeling over...

Slight scary that the scale goes up to 180° ...

That's odd - no picture in Post 1, just a little black box:confused:

Yep, same here.
I thought it was just me.

Whew! I was about to go out for an eye exam.:ugh:

Welllllll......
 

......it was there yesterday evening. And the dial "presentation" made it look like an g2b compass display aircraft instrument.

The Ancient Mariner

Oh, well, and I thought it was just me being terminally stupid as usual. OK, back to the Horlicks

Same for me. Presumably I need to download something to be able to see it. Any of you IT experts know what that would be?

Hopefully I have fixed the dropbox image. No clues other that the 5T reference which looks RAF to me. My thought was that it might be airship related.

The little arrow above the 5T looks like an "HMG property" symbol - I have the same on the back of my wristwatch :E

Are there any connections or markings on the reverse? What's the diameter, roughly.

Whatever it is, the thing that I find most curious is the port/stbd asymmetry.


Incidentally, I'd be willing to bet that if you put a Geiger Counter to it, you may find it's fairly radioactive. Not because it's from a reactor, but because it looks like it may have used quite a lot of tritium or uranium based "glow in the dark" paint which was quite common for some years.

G

That is what puzzled me, I have asked the owner for more details. The 5 Stores Ref would normally have referred to Electrical Parts but I can find no reference to 5T!

2 days after giving a talk on Radio Navigation equipment, I was asked what this is!

My guess it that it has something to do with mooring airships.

By no means the same but it looks very much like a "gun fire arc" limiter thing I once saw inside a ships gun turret, the fellow showing us around if I remember correctly said it was to prevent self inflicted damage in the event that the automatic interupter systems failed, however if memory serves me right it was a bloody great brass thingy with similar markings on it, but it was long ago and the ship {boat?} had been laid up since the end of the war.

If it is WW II or earlier then it likely has a Radium painted dial. IIRC a 26,000 year half life. Tritium was used post WW II most likely starting in the early 1950's.

Hugh, retired Nuclear Safety guy who had the dubious experience of mapping the Radium contamination of the Elgin clock factories in northern Illinois. This was one of the places that the Radium Girls worked painting clock, watch and instrument faces..