My brother owns an antique store in Washington State. He ended up with the speedo below recently. He asked my why it would read 0-90 mph both left and right. The only thing I could come up with is that might be a universal speedo - if your source spins either clockwise or counterclockwise, it would still work.
Beyond that guess, not a clue. What say the hive?
Edit - no numbers anywhere but on the face.
I asked someone that knows these things and this is what he said:
"Its a hand tach. You can measure speed going in either direction."
So measure speed going in forward and reverse? In what, I wonder...?
Could it be from a train or trolley? Something that regularly goes both ways?
Maybe a trolley. I thought of trains, but the images I found were of very heavy duty units. I'll go look around for trolley speedos.
The needle looks like one on a 32-32 SW truck speedo, for what it's worth.
I was expecting budgie smugglers...
I'm guessing it's for some industrial use, and the logo suggests pre-war. What does the back side look like, and what's the diameter? A hand held speedo/tacho would typically have a stub with a rubber tip on it, so you can hold it against a spinning wheel or pulley. They also usually don't have a very big dial, and that one looks like may be fairly large. Another thought is maybe it was used on a streetcar or train, since they can travel in both directions.
There are some vintage S-W catalogs available at this link, but they appear to be for automotive applications only https://www.yenko.net/forum/showthread.php?t=160435 If you're on Facebook there's a page for vintage S-W gauge collectors: https://www.facebook.com/vintagestewartwarner/
I signed up with the Vintage SW group on Facebook yesterday. They haven't approved me yet...
Also, asked my brother for a picture of the back side
The rubber piece with the cone just slips over the drive. I'm wondering if it's some kind of protective piece for shipping, making the speedo NOS?
Based on those last pics, I agree with it being a hand held device. They're usually tachometers and not speedometers, so that is unusual.
Agreed, I would think the rubber piece is held up against a rotating object for the purposes of transmitting the spinning motion into the speedo.
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