GRAMM letter scale, Germany
This letter scale dates from the Second World War or from the years immediately after. I estimate the production period to be 1940 - 1950. Lack of metal made it necessary to use wood, which was more abundant. The wood of this specimen is painted red. The scale is on a 0.5 mm thin zinc plate. This plate is folded over at the bottom and secured to the base with two little nails, and also secured to the wooden vertical stand with two little nails. The 100 gram scale has a stripe of measure per five grams. The fairly long axles of the weighing mechanism are 1.0 millimeter round, the scale mechanism moves remarkably smoothly. The counterweight and pointer arm is folded with the upper short arm of the parallelogram from a single magnetic steel strip. The strip is 5.5 mm wide and 1.4 mm thick. The short arm has been locally narrowed to 3.5 mm to prevent it from getting stuck on the wooden vertical part of the mechanism. A small block of zinc is the counterweight at the bottom of the pointer arm. The wooden base is 17.0 x 5.8 cm, the removable wooden letter plate is 6.0 x 7.3 cm and is not perfectly rectangular, but is a parallelogram. The scale is 18.5 cm high.
There are versions with a cardboard measuring scale, it is unclear to me whether these were made earlier or later. Most of the examples I saw of this model were made of simply unpainted wood.
Below are some more images of this special GRAMM letter scale.
back of the letter scale
