Gramophone Dreams #34: The Salt Cellar System

The image above is not a modernist oil painting. It’s an airport x-ray of my friend Jeffrey Jackson’s backpack.

Can you identify its contents? Did you notice the red rectangle alerting the inspector of a suspicious object is, or what it’s worth?

That ominous-looking black silhouette is a 1930s-era Western Electric 555W “receiver”—ie, a compression driver for use with a horn. It’s about 10” in diameter and weighs around 15lb. It requires a 7V DC/1.4A power supply for its field-coil magnet and would cost about $8000 to replace.