Whats This?
 

I have had this thing for a while it was in a old WW2 vets stuff I came upon. The little wheel turns the dial on one side that has measuments in metric. It says SELSI GERMANY on it . The other side is a compass. Any Ideas?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5.../thingy001.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5.../thingy002.jpg

Here's a guess. The dial is graduated in miles and kilometers, so it may be designed for use with maps of a particular scale to measure distances. The device would be useful for navigating using a map.

and it says inches to.... maybe to take British maps and translate them to European maps?

Don,

Your guess is correct. I don't remember the exact term for them. Kind of a map odometer. Neat find!

Ron

Hold the device upright and roll the little wheel along a road or distance on a map. It reads back the distance in miles or kilometers depending on which of the two scales you look at.

Handy device even today even with mapping software like Deloreme or EarthGoogle.

David

If you look closely it has centimeters to kilometers as well as the inches to miles. Also I suspect that the wheel on the bottom is for use on a map surface. Would be very handy for a field commander.

Before I received my invitation to join the US Army in 1969, I worked part-time for a civil engineer, all of us were familiar with these gadgets used to determine actual linear distance (mileage) from a map. Great little device, if computers crash now, the current tribe would be at a total loss.

I've seen several of these over the years, called "map mileage calculator" or "analog map distance reader" or various combinations of words meaning all the same thing. Doing a google search, I noted one here:

http://www.kitefarm.com/compass_museum/unclassd.htm

Thanks for the info I cant help but wonder where stuff like this has been and what its done. clint

Better ever than never
 

CURVIMETER is a most common name. When I was in army in former Jugoslavija, work with maps, and with curvimeter was part of standard training.

"The curvimeter is an instrument designed for measuring the length of curved and crooked lines plotted on topographic plans, maps and graphical documents. ..."