Help what is this meter for?

[909jed]

I found this in the garage of my 96 yr old mom. I dont have a clue where it came from. I know it has been there for at least 45yrs.

 

[larry_g]

Battery cell tester. The old tar top auto batteries you could poke through the tar and contact the tie bar that connected the cells in the battery case.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[Chin]

what does the gauge read? Ft/lb? Ohms? Awesomeness? Probably would help figure out what it was used for.

 

[duke5572]

From what I can tell, it reads in VOLTS. Says so on the meter.

Cool find. Mostly obsolete now that digital multimeters are dirt cheap, but it may have some value to a collector.

 

[Steinmetz]

I found this in the garage of my 96 yr old mom. I dont have a clue where it came from. I know it has been there for at least 45yrs.

Battery cell voltmeter. Old lead-acid batteries once had external connecting straps that could be accessed by this thing. The scale reads up to three volts. The nominal cell voltage from a lead-acid cell is about two-plus volts.

 

[Danglerb]

Dunno, could be a battery cell tester, but seems to be something to test ability to focus a camera.

 

[acdc73]

it's even got a load resister on it...

 

[Milton Shaw]

Battery cell tester for old tar top batteries. The lead connectors were under the tar and those points would piece the tar and read voltages on each cell and tell if battery was going bad. These went away with the all plastic case batteries about 40 years ago now, although you might find a tar top battery in an old electric fork lift but those would be too small to test one of those.