Have you ever discovered anything in an attic box and had no idea what it was? These are artifacts that our grandparents may have been familiar with, but the notion of what they were capable of has been lost to time.

This includes the image we have for you above. Although your grandparents and great-grandparents may have used it regularly, relatively few people use it in this form now. In fact, the Internet had a tough time determining what it was.

It’s a hand mixer, in case you hadn’t guessed. It was used in the kitchen to combine meals and saved a lot of time over combining with a spoon. Even though it wasn’t electric, the whirling pieces stirred things up rapidly.

In 1865, a patent for a mixer with spinning elements was granted in Baltimore, Maryland. A whisk was invented in 1857, while another eggbeater was patented in 1859.

These remained a prominent feature of kitchen equipment, and even though we now have products that function automatically, they still worked well to save time in the kitchen, which is why they were so popular.

It’s always intriguing to see stuff like this because it was popular a long time ago. Who knows? Maybe 100 years from now, people will wonder what we used in the kitchen.