Advertisement.

Control all your servants from one central location with the Rohrbaugh Regenerative Motor Inhibitor. • Places all voluntary muscle movements under your command
• Removes inconvenient free will
• Adjustable for 18 different degrees of domestic staff, from cleaning lady to butler
• Ask about optional death ray

Comments

  1. Occasional Correspondent says:

    A friend and I have been pondering: What is the original of the device in the photo?  My best guess is a radio vintage 1910s-1920s.  My father (b.1930) had a radio not quite as large but with a comparable number of dials and meters.  My second guess, industrial monitoring/control console of some kind.  Image search has not provided satisfaction — seems fixated on the fancy cabinetry.

    I also wondered what an expert in fashion (not me) might glean from the clothing in the photo as to timeframe (lack of color unhelpful).  I note the tie has a flat bottom, not the pointy/angled bottom I usually see nowadays.  Is the tie (or other features) distinctive of some time period in some country?  (Of course, the man might have been wearing the same suit for 10 or 20 years.  Inventors? Engineers? Any of you do that?)  For that matter, what would an expert in photography and printing glean from the features of the picture? — to my eye, has a facsimile-like graininess.

    • Dr. Boli says:

      Your best guess was correct: the machine is adapted from a radio that won a prize for beauty in 1924. The photograph is printed by the halftone process, like almost all photographs in newspapers or in magazines printed on cheap paper: it is squished through a screen that reduces it to dots of varying dimensions, thus simulating shades of grey on printing equipment that can print only black or not at all.

  2. heloise says:

    Of the 18 degrees this provides, are there settings for Husband? Wife? (for some spouses do regard the partner as domestic staff)  How about Teenager?  What about that acme of control difficulty, Household Cats?  (and where would these fall in the cleaning-lady-to-butler sequence?)

    • Dr. Boli says:

      We communicated your question to the advertiser. The answer we received was this: Spouses rank just below butlers. Teenagers are not subject to the equipment, as it is more economical to control them with moving pictures on a phone screen. Household cats are the ones expected to operate the equipment.

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