Can some one tell me what it is ?

[hazard1]

can some one tell me what it is ?

 

[jedishrfu]

It could be some sort of board for wrapping knots or doing wire windings on considering it has so many peg holes.

Google image search thinks its a cabinet:

https://www.google.com/search?safe=...tIYre8gHx8oG4BQ&ved=0CB4Qsw4&biw=1284&bih=645

 

[berkeman]

can some one tell me what it is ?

Welcome to the PF.

Do you know what it is? Where did you get the picture?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Is there any electrical resistance between the 'peg holes'?

 

[AlephZero]

I wonder if it's an ancient visual aid for teaching trig functions. If you join the holes to the "origin" you get lots of angles with sin, cos and tan equal to ratios of small integers.

That would explain the holes along the circular arcs at all the intersections with the lines "y = 1", "y = 2", etc.

 

[jedishrfu]

I think it was made by Archimedes before he made the Antikythera device.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Joking aside, the center hole seems to be different from the other holes. It looks like it may be a socket for a lead and so maybe the resistance idea is right.

Can we get a picture of the backside too? Is there any writing on it? Where did you get it? From a school or college environment?

As an aside, we had some long lost geometry models called Olivier models that were being restored made apparently in the 1820's or later:

 

[256bits]

I wonder if it's an ancient visual aid for teaching trig functions. If you join the holes to the "origin" you get lots of angles with sin, cos and tan equal to ratios of small integers.

That would explain the holes along the circular arcs at all the intersections with the lines "y = 1", "y = 2", etc.

An adaptation of this,

Looking at triangle OAM , why is AM equal to sin40 ∘ ?

Looking at triangle OAB , why is AB equal to 2sin20 ∘ ?

Looking at triangle ABM , why is AM also equal to ABcos20 ∘ which works out as 2sin20 ∘ cos20 ∘

So it looks like the same AM length value can be calculated by using sin40 ∘

and also calculated by using 2sin20 ∘ cos20 ∘

http://nrich.maths.org/2864