The linked object appears in the background during some shots of The Big Bang Theory. Guesses so far are some sort of musical instrument, or old technology.
In case you’re not familiar with the show, it’s about a group of geeky physicists and their comic interactions with the rest of the world (if that helps). The question arose during the weekly Cafe Society discussion here.
My first guess was that it is part of the internal structure of a piano, but the arrangement doesn’t really jibe with the key structure.
I tried googling some images, and while I still couldn’t find the answer, I did come up with a second question:
Don’t you mean, “What is eating this woman’s head?”
It looks like a lot of power diodes to convert AC into DC. The photo doesn’t have the resolution to examine the parts close enough.
Looks like a row of high power fuses on a distribution rail. Like these models http://www.igbts.ru/store/hinode/fuses/profile/660GH-125.html
Here it is enlarged with a ridiculous amount of sharpening.
I’m going with something electrical, like Wiltshire suggests. The “breaks” every six “nodes” evokes a piano keyboard, but piano keys are not layed out in that pattern.
It’s not focused, so Diode will remain my opinion.
That’s an early model of Digital Equipment Corp.'s “Portable Personal Hairdo.” The technology to build those things has gotten a lot smaller since then.
Don’t talk that way about my governor’s mom!
First blush - and thanks to **lieu **for alerting me to this thread - is that it is the guts to an early synthesizer. Lemme see if I can find a pic to support my theory…
My electrical enthusiast friend says it looks like a block of fuses, they do look like those pictured by Wiltshire.
No joy on my end so far - I have tried Googling some variations on synthesizer. Checking with a friend, but I suspect you guys are on the right track with something more electrical or fuse-ish…
Something made my brain say “thyristor bank” though I really don’t remember ever seeing such a thing.
I thought Thyristors used barter?
No, charge cards.
Can I get some background here, since I’ve never seen the show? I read the Wiki page on it, but that doesn’t have much context. What type of place is that screen shot be in? It looks like someone’s apartment, with geek decor…? There seems to be an astrolabe or somesuch at the edge of the shot.
ETA: found a wider screen shot here. So I guess it is an apartment.
Yup. Two university physicists with serious geek decorating sense.
I say either fuses or surge suppressors.
I’m going to hazard that its a cast off fuse panel (maybe with a cover removed) used for lighting or some such that was scrounged from spare parts lying around the production company. This works rather well – it looks technical, but nobody knows quite what it is. Perfect for a show like that.
