Discovery: The Automatic Incinerator
Recently, my attention has been called to the following, extremely unusual object. At least it is so for me, and AC - who found it - was stunned as well. The discovery is an "Automatic Incinerator" by Barrywald.
You do not need to google. It cannot be found there. Actually, it looks like some stuff from the American 50s or 60s - the Era of the Electric Devices arriving in everybody's home.
You pull the lever on the left, the flap on top opens, you throw in your waste to be incinerated, the flap closes, a ticking sound - a kind of timer - starts, and 1000W worth of electric power are converted into heat inside, thereby turning your waste to ashes.
You do not need to google. It cannot be found there. Actually, it looks like some stuff from the American 50s or 60s - the Era of the Electric Devices arriving in everybody's home.
You pull the lever on the left, the flap on top opens, you throw in your waste to be incinerated, the flap closes, a ticking sound - a kind of timer - starts, and 1000W worth of electric power are converted into heat inside, thereby turning your waste to ashes.
posted by PJS at
Sunday, June 19, 2005
4 Comments:
One of these devices was installed in a nuclear bunker near Hannover in West Germany in 1966.
I found these photos on the homepage of Vorbei e.V., a registered society that cares for the now abandoned facility:
Pic 1
Pic 2
(The room is the left of the rest rooms in the middle of the top row on this floor plan)
Maybe the device was supposed to be used to incinerate contaminated clothes.
Then again it would have made more sense to install it in one of the rooms closer to the entrance of the bunker.
Mad Ollie,
thanks for the link. Awesome :-) I wouldn't have expected to get any more info about this thing.
However, I think the idea behind the Barrywald Automatic Incinerator is more prosaic. In fact, it's too small to incinerate any amount of clothing. Instead, I strongly believe (and this is from a guy's perspective) that they are used to burn up female hygiene articles (read, used panty liners). In any case, this would explain why there are some in the female restrooms, but not in the male ones.
Good point!
Didn't think of this at all.
By the way I think it's remarkable that they had two different rest rooms anyway - in a nuclear bunker! ;-)
Don't know if there even were female soldiers in the German armed forces at that time - though this bunker was 'only' used for telecommunication purposes.
Hy
I´ve seen one of those in a abandoned factory near Stuttgart/Germany.
Barrywald
It´s indeed used to incinerate female hygiene articles.
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