Accredited Museum

A BUOY?

This object is a total mystery to us. It is about 1 foot (30 cms) long. It is a hollow sealed brass object and has what appears to be a tyre valve at the hidden end.Possibly a demonstration device for a vacuum, as with Otto Von Guerickes expriment in Magdeburg 1670.

Your comments:

• It looks a lot like a stop-cock for a toilet tank.
  The ring at the right end would fit over an "arm" when the chain was pulled to raise the stop-cock and release water from the tank, which used to be suspended near the W.C. ceiling, down through a pipe leading into the toilet. Thus was a toilet flushed.
  
  .......... p.m. clift, Montreal, QC, Canada, 4th of October 2009
  
  
• Is it an apparatus to show the "power" of a vacuum?
  Magdeburg Spheres type! Evacuate and two persons pull the handles to try to part the spheres. But that would suppose that the two halves do come apart - perhaps the seal has solidified and permanently sealed the two parts?
  
  .......... Roy, New Forest England, 4th of April 2009