These are in a classroom in Elms College. I am not near there so I cannot get any other photos or accost a facilities employee and simply ask. I am told it’s possible that the room used to be a chemistry lab, so our best guess so far was that these somehow control the gas to the (now removed) workstation gas burners?
I can’t open the pictures, but my guess is that when the controls were installed, there was no chalkboard there. Time passes and someone wants more chalkboard space, which leads to installers drilling a hole in the new chalkboard to fit around the immovable obstacle.
I have no idea but if you have an account on reddit (and if not it takes seconds to make one) try posting this on www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing . Their hits outweigh their misses and I’ve seen some truly bizarre/obscure things identified there.
I don’t know what those controls are. Here’s my guest guess and the reasoning behind it:
Fletcher Sewer and Drain is the name of a company in Springfield, MA.
A regulator controls flow volume for liquids or gasses.
Therefore, I bet there are pipes on the other side of that wall, which those regulators control the flow for. I’d bet they have nothing to do with the chalkboard, and I’d bet the classroom has been remodeled or converted from something else since the building was built.
Isn’t the obvious answer, since both are “set” at a midpoint, to move one to fully OPEN, and the other to fully CLOSED, and then just wait to see what happens?
Altlas means globe, sphere… it may be a spherical valve in the thing.
A mythical King of Mauretania, in Libya. Atlas was a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, who supposedly made the first celestial globe. It was this Atlas that Mercator was thinking of, when he first used the name ‘Atlas’ (and a depiction of the King appears on the title-page).
Under their “about us” page, that company was started in 1985 as a one man operation. I dunno, but that valve looks more old school than that. They also only advertise drain services like unblocking and inspection, they don’t seem like the kind of place that would manufacture valves.
