The word of the day is whiffletree.

A whiffletree is an early form of a mechanical Digital to Analog converter. It’s also a mechanism to distribute force evenly through a series of mechanical linkages.

Here’s why it’s awesome:

And here’s a bit more information about it:

Kinda makes me want to go digging through the company store room looking for an old Selectric so we can hack it a bit. OH! We could use it for systems alerting!  A complete waste of time, perhaps, but at least they wouldn’t hit the landfill.