What is it? Game 41

This weeks' collaboration with What is it? Blog brings us this strange contraption - can you guess what it is for? For more clues, check out What is it? Blog.

Place your guess in the comment section - please post no URL, let others play. No prize this week, you're playing for bragging rights only. Have fun!

Update 10/19/07 - here's the answer:

Counter/odometer, patent number 72,033, from the patent page:

This invention relates to a new and improved machine or apparatus for registering numbers applicable to odometers or measurements of quantities of all kinds, such as the numbers of barrels of flour, bushels of grain, or any other commodity that requires a tally or record of the quantity packed, stored, weighed, or handled in any manner, and applicable also to machinery of all kinds to register the revolutions of wheels decimally.

Congratulations to Flemming Frandsen, who got it right at the very first guess!

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Part of a voting machine?

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It is a counter.

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It's a counter.

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I'm guessing a counter. Counts to 1000. You have 3 gears, each with 10 teeth, and one vertical pin on each gear intended to engage the teeth of the next. Each gear has a spring that engages the spaces between the teeth in order for each wheel to remain locked in it's last position unless manually advanced by the lower gear. (i.e. they are not freewheeling.)

I would also hazard a guess that the metal flange/tab in the left was used as a interface/guide for the actuating mechanism, which would interface with the first/lowest gear, and the big spring on top probably served as a return spring for the actuating mechanism.

And now, having demonstrated a level of nerdiness beyond even my wildest dreams, I shall now proceed to take a lethal dose of Paracetemol. It's been a pleasure...