rotates him

It kind of scares us, frankly.

they do have a picture with the back open. it's full of capacitors.

I'm probably getting hung up on the shape and symbol in the center, but it reminds me of a Rubidium clock.

ok I have no idea what this thing is but I got really curious, here's some shit:

• this page claims to have catalogs for 1951 and 1960 Aerovox products. You'll notice that the 1951 version has the same brand logo seen in the capacitor in the ebay listing, but the 1960 does not -- that makes me fairly sure that this computer was pre-1960.
• According to this site, Aerovox was founded in 1924, which I guess gives you a farthest back era, though that's hardly surprising given the history of computers. More importantly it could mark this as a bit of wireless equipment, but who knows if they just manufactured the capacitors.
• given the LACK of material inside, my personal theory is this is a sort of readout for a more complicated device -- likely this was part of a kit, with other devices that would do the Thinking, and this would be the readout. Some sort of radio machine?
• friend of mine (@coolranchzaku) who is an electrician says the circular thing on the back side is almost certainly a potentiometer, which would adjust the voltage from the wall jack into what works for the device.
• @vogon has put forward that it might be a movie prop from the 50s or 60s, hence the old capacitators but unclear usage. 8 sets of resistors & capacitors for 8 lights, on random blinks. I am not swayed by this theory, but he's very convinced.
• I think it's some sort of endpoint for a computer device. The rear power cable could be also some sort of bundle (as per @coolranchzaku) that provides some sort of basic data. But he's pretty unsure about this.

simplest explanation is that it is a blinkenlights machine for a movie prop. could be some sort of terminal for a larger computer machine. i dunno!

i'm completely fascinated by how TILT is a recognizable thing but none of the others are. if anything that makes it seem less likely to be a movie prop? it's such an arbitrary decision but definitely something that could happen for a device with real purpose

(they could've just copied something else though)

The seller didn't think it was worthwhile to take a single picture of the plug, yet was able to trivially plug it in. That tells me that it is just an ordinary power plug. The only input is power, the only output is random blinks. The movie prop theory sounds good to me. The only thing that it's missing is a secret control to switch between "happy blinks" and "the tilt light is mad" patterns.

i think this is a dog. its whats dogs look like

Movie prop makes sense, and I even figured out how it works.

AC comes in, goes through a diode, filtered by the big yellow cap. Now you have about 170VDC.

DC goes through the potentiometer, which limits current to the rest of the circuit.

The rest of the circuit is just the same thing in parallel, eight times:

A resistor in series with a capacitor, so it charges slowly. A neon lamp across the capacitor.

A neon lamp is a gas discharge tube, with a breakdown voltage. When the capacitor voltage exceeds the breakdown voltage, the lamp flashes and discharges the capacitor, starting the cycle over.

Since the parts have loose tolerances, the frequency of each flashing light is going to be slightly out of sync and the thing looks random.

Turning the pot adjusts the blinkyness speed.

So yeah, movie prop, or stage prop, or just a funny decoration for your house if you're That Kind Of Person.

I think it might be a 50 year old joke because the 7080 was fucking humongous and this doesn't much stuff in it.

Or maybe a film prop?

Our first guess is that this was used to control some form of physical instrumentation. But seeing as it has no inputs or outputs (though, in the photos of it open, what's with that circular thing?), our best guess is that it's just.

a shitpost.

Like, someone from 50 years ago made a box with lights that go bleep bloop and they spent far too much money on it and they did it because it was cool or cute or funny or entertaining or it really scared people seeing a black box with inscrutable lights just as it is doing right now, today.

I got 20 bucks that says it's a film prop. Circuit just looks like 8 relaxation oscillators in a box with a power switch and a trimmer on the back for adjusting the blink rate. Doubt it's precise enough to be a timing generator for something else, the labels don't match that purpose anyways, and there's absolutely no evidence it ever did anything else or connected to anything else. I mean come on what computer needs a TILT light (well, all of them really)

looks like lab built lab equipment, atom suggests physics or nuclear/DOE/IAEA to me, case looks... bad in the physics department machine shop sorta way. could be low budget movie prop, but most try to look better than... this

but may still be a prank from there

It seems likely that this is a genuine interocitor part

I'm late to the party but I looked at the pictures and the innards are almost shouting "stage prop". After looking at the replies, there's already a Team Prop so I'm in there. This may be some bespoke bit of flair for a high school drama club from back in the day. There's nothing I can see on the inside that's beyond basic Popular Electronics novice tutorials from the era. Even the cabinet could be spare parts from military surplus. Also it's picky but the inconsistent centering and kerning on the text (and the graphic) points to one-off.

I can tell you a few things about it from looking at it:

1: It's likely from the 1950s, but maybe from the earliest part of the 60s, with "7080" being a reference to the IBM supercomputer of the same name. Given the internals and the overall aesthetic, I would venture to guess it was probably 1950s and just "predicting" the future of IBM's 700 series of computers.

2: The only thing it would be capable of doing is blinking/flashing. The potentiometer above the main capacitor probably adjusts how quickly or slowly it flashes.

It is 100% a sci fi prop, from either a movie or a television show. Finding out which, specifically, may be difficult since it's probably a background prop that's not meant to be scrutinized, though it's probably visible at some point since they bothered putting text on it. Obviously "TILT" is something audiences would have been familiar with from pinball machines, and the unsure sounding "BA?" makes me think it was a prop maker having some fun.

The seller is an honest man