March 02, 2004
#25 :: Digital counter
This little clockwork device is very, very old, judging by the wear. There are no maker's marks anywhere on it. The back of its potmetal chassis is worn away where a metal thumb ring once rode, eroding the surface. Its stamped tin face bears the dents and scars of a thousand infinitesimal blows - a phenomenon about which William Gibson wrote beautifully in Neuromancer. Knobs on its back let you reset each of the dials inside, which spin smoothly and then click over - each moving the next one up by a power of 10 with every 10 pushes of the stamped-steel thumb button. Did it count baseball fans? Inmates at bed check? Pallets of cabbage thudding onto a flatbed, box after hard-picked box? It's not saying.
I know exactly what it is! It's a 'counter' used by excavator operators to count the gravel trucks as they load them with whatever it is that they are loading on that job. One click = one truck full. At the end of the day they can then refer to the amount of trucks they loaded ...mostly for billing purposes.
Hope this solves the mystery! :)