Posted on 10/30/2024 12:52:22 PM PDT by Red Badger
The Dorchester County Historical Society is trying to identify a mystery machine that has been in storage since the 1990s and includes components believed to be about 100 years old. Photo courtesy of the Dorchester County Historical Society/Facebook
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Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Historians in Maryland are seeking the public's help to identify a mysterious machine donated to a museum in the 1990s.
The Dorchester County Historical Society posted photos to social media showing a machine composed of a flat ceramic counter top and two spinning objects that resemble rolling pins.
The contraption was donated to the historical society's Neild Museum in the 1990s and has been in storage since.
"Can you identify this machine? It has a new motor but everything else is around 100 years old. What local industry would have used it?" the Facebook post said.
Zoe Phillips, executive director of the historical society, said one theory being pursued by historians is the possibility that the machine was intended to make beaten biscuits, which were once popular in Maryland and were known for their dense texture.
She said it may have been intended to simplify the dough-making process, which traditionally involved using an ax to beat the dough on a stump to remove air pockets.
"We potentially think it was a Maryland beaten biscuit maker," Phillips told WBOC-TV. "Created by a man who was trying to help his aunt with the business, and the belief is that this would've helped beat the air out of the dough as the biscuits were being created."
Other possibilities suggested in the comments of the Facebook post include a meat tenderizer and a leather-working tool.
It looks like a huge, complicated and clumsy tool for making ravioli...
Squirrel Reckoner. Saw it right off the bat. Grandfather had one. See, you feed the squirrels in head first. Then they’re reckoned with.
from my prison food mass production days, it does look like a food/dough beater system as is the smooth table for pastry making, many repurposed items in the 20s and 30s we had a dough mixer with a 1930 international harvester rear differential in it.
Beat yer biscuit!
Meat tenderizer or for working hides?
It looks somewhat like some type of lithograph machine.
Well, something is moving along through the two rollers and producing dents as you said....and I agree...it’s probably a food product. Hmmmmm
“hamburger paddy maker”
Irish burgers?
pasta maker ...
Hexagons, not circular shape. most interesting. perhaps for cutting honeycomb frames for beehives.
I’d take some scrapings from the area just below the plate to a lab.
Looks like a prototype for a repurposer.
Looks like a very old printing press.
Was that something that was used to torture hamsters
If that thing were used for biscuits there would be flour in every crack and crevice.
Except for the knobby roller on top it looks like the machines the monument industry used to “punch out “ templates in the 20th century. Some shops still use them as they never crash or are left “ no longer supported.”
An early ballot reader?
nub-o-matic
Early version judging lack of turbocharger
It’s a democratic ballot counting machine. If the ballot is democratic it slides right through. If it is republican the little nobs tear it apart!
LOL
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