What Is It? Game 78 - Neatorama

Yay! It's time for our collaboration with What is it? Blog - can you guess what this strange contraption is for?

Place your guess in the comment section. No prize this week, so you're playing for bragging rights only.

For more guessing fun, check out the What is it? blog. Good luck!

Update 10/17/08 - Here's the answer:

A rack lifter, this winch was powered by horses and was used to elevate a wagon box or rack of hay up to the second floor of a barn, where it was forked to the storage area. Patent number 379,693 has some drawings of a similar device.

Congrats to utron who got it right first!

I'd love to say it belongs to a catapult but the winch is a bit big. I'll stick with catapult winch anyway.

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its a turny thingie used for lifting boats when they are making them

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its a whale's toothbrush

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its a rope storage winder

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kitty kat plaything

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that is clearly a pitchfork.... or are we concentrating on the thing in the foreground?

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An escapement for a clock tower style clock

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Hmmm, I think it's possibly the winch contraption for lifting gates in forts or castles. Yeaher!

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It looks like an ancient torture device. Possibly an automatic spanking machine!

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I'd say the big wheel type thing is a ratchet. Dunno what the whole thing's used for (apart from lifting what is presumably heavy stuff).

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Looks like a giant gear that turns by pulling on the rope.

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Industrial piñata machine for mucho grande fiestas! Or maybe an engine hoist for pulling the engines out of non-horseless carriages?

Is it just me or does it look like the rope is wound the wrong direction for the ratchet mechanism to be of any use if a load was applied?

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looks like a lift for hay in a barn

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Used to lift bails of hay into a loft

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It looks like that it's on it's side and that it's that big jobby that goes up the centre of a wind or water mill. I think that cog may be above or below the grinding surface.

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ratchet driven spanish windlass or windless

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It's a wood saw for cutting the soft stuff.

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I don't know what it is, but I know Vincent Price is hanging around somewhere.

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I have no idea what the name is, but it's for working with animal skins, in a tanning or leather works factory (my vocabulary sucks)

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It's a water wheel.

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It is for lifting hay in the barn.

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It's a prop from the movie Saw V.

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seekshelter, that was way funny.

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It's the early form of the "Swinging Pendulum of Doom", as seen in the movie "Loony Tunes: Back in Action".

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water wheel?

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it's obviously the primitive model for the large hadron collider!

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medieval lawnmover

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IT'S A TRAP!

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I'm guessing it's used to raise an anchor.

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haha Justin!

I can't believe you've actually done 78 of these things that are so amazingly without immediate definition.

It's obviously a streetlight (had to).

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Hahahaha seekshelter! A whale's toothbrush!

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It looks like a clock gear.

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didn't anyone guess hay bale cutter? I used to bale hay as a kid, and I'm sure wherever they went needed some way to break them up.

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Ye olden style engine puller for tractor engines and what not. The ratchet part is to that engine doesn't just fall if it gives way.

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Bob Barker's original version of The Price of Right's Wheel of DEATH!

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It's a drillbit, part of the forerunner to our giant mining and tunelling machines. It's for mining soft cheese.

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The other equipment in the room shows that it is some sort of farm equipment... the pitch forks for hay stacks make me think it is speciffically used to pick up and move blocks of hay.

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It's the drill piece they used to carve out the tunnel the Large Hadron Collider was built in!

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Filmburner is correct!

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It reminds me of a coffee plantation tour I took in Panama. It processes coffee beans?

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its part of a windmill, the sails turn all sorts of wheels cogs and rachety things, and thats one of them

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but, isn't that ratchet set up to allow the rope to unspool? which would not be helpful for lifting

am i having a brainfart?

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a large saw poker

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