What is that Thing?

The above photo was taken in Folsom Library's Open Study Room 142C on the bottom floor. Do you know what the gray box is?

Retiree Irv Stephens, our Rensselaer Libraries Historian, explained it to me: from 1976 to about 1990 there were a number of these devices connected to electric typewriters. Twenty-five cents got you 1/2 hour of typewriter time! Somehow this one survived (sans typewriter).

Bob Mayo
Director, Rensselaer Libraries