It's also sad how much knowledge is lost as the people that know,disappear
That is so true. When I used to troll e-Bay a lot I was truly amazed at the number of people who advertised stuff and had absolutely no clue as to what it really was. Some of the descriptions were downright hilarious.
I had an instance awhile back where I went into an antique store that I frequent a lot and the owner is someone who is very well versed in ID'ing a lot of older items. He showed me this one device he had purchased and asked if I had ever seen one as he had no clue as to it's purpose. He knew it was a timer of some sort but did not know what for.
I recognized it immediately only because my grandfather(who raised me as a child)had one that he used all the time. It was a timer for pigeon racing.
For those not familiar with racing pigeons;it used to be a huge sport back in the 1920's and thereabouts. Pigeons would be loaded into cages with little bands containing the info on the birds and the owner attached to their legs and transported to a prescribed distance from their home coop. The participants had the exact distances from their coops to the release point logged and the birds would be released at prescribed intervals.
When the birds arrived home and into their coops the band would be removed and inserted into the time clock which would record the exact time. The bird with the fastest time would be considered the winner. The biggest trick was getting the bird back into the coop and caught so their band could be logged. Some had a nasty habit of perching on the garage just outside the coop and refusing to go in until they felt like it.
As I sit here typing this I am looking at a painting in my computer room that a friend of my grandfather painted in 1932 of two very famous homing pigeons.They are painted life-size and the coloring in their necks still glows. They completed a 1,000 mile race in (I believe)33 hours and change.
Sorry for the long rant;I/m tired and trying to put myself to sleep. Got another round of doctor's appointments tomorrow.
