SPOILER ALERT ! – ANSWER IS NOW UP, THIRD PHOTO DOWN

Here is the first, and very possibly last, mystery object on Zoonomian.

It is science-related, and I just found it lying around the house – which looking at the other weird stuff around here isn’t even a clue.  Ideas on a postcard, twitter, or you could even leave a comment with your happy memories of this object below.

Update 27/3/10: OK – Joerg Heber, via Twitter, reckons it’s a Dalek.  Wrong.   Here is the whole thing then.  Easy now, right?

Update 28/3/10: Responses via Twitter and e-mail: It’s not a Galilean telescope, musical instrument, gas relief valve, or navigational tool.

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THE ANSWER

All very confusing isn’t it.  But not, in the words of  S.R.Hadden, “if you think like a Vegan”…..a Vegan laboratory technician that is.

Because the mystery object, in its full unraveled glory, is a set of mid-twentieth century laboratory cork borers.

To better understand the lost art of laboratory cork boring, we can usefully turn to our copy of ‘How to make common things, for boys’ – by John A Bower:

“The borer is a brass tube with sharp cutting edges, as shown in [the figure], which should be carefully kept, so that the cutting part does not get turned up by coming into rough contact with your file, or by falling on a hard floor,, for the edge is soft, and only adapted to cut such soft substances as cork. Cork-borers are sold in sets (see figure). To bore the cork, put a stout wire through the hole at the upper end of the barrel of the borer; hold the cork firmly in the left hand, pressing it down on a board, or hold it flush with the edge of the board. Begin with the smaller end of the cork. Hold the borer at right angles to the top of the cork ; then with a slight pressure turn it into the cork, till you find it through the other end. Draw out the borer, and with the wire posh out the core from inside of the tube and pat it away – the borer may then be smeared over with a little petroleum to keep it bright“

I ‘acquired’ my set from Birmingham University in the mid-eighties, and have used them in anger on cork and rubber no less.   You can still buy similar sets, but they tend to come with handles built in – which kind of gives the game away from a mystery object perspective.

So, sorry if you were expecting a ‘flux capacitor’, or something out of the LHC.  I guess the true answer is relatively boring.

Thanks to all those who had a crack at it though.