Perpetual Calendar Wheel

Here's a clever item I ran across back in the year 2000, just as we were all thinking of the new century, the new millennium, and all. It's a genuine brass calendar wheel, a perpetual calendar which will work for any month of any year from 2000 to 2099.

It stands up like a little easel, with a third brass leg folding out behind. Just rotate the wheel to line up the year over the month, up on top. And then in the window down below, you can read off the calendar for the month. Presently set, of course, for September 2006.

Made in India, I'd guess low-tech, molten brass poured into a mold, cool and paint, a few screws to assemble it, and voilà! Aesthetic and functional, both. It appeals to the Selective Luddite™ in me— why don't we have more funky devices like this, devices with soul, instead of sterile items that require batteries and then at a critical moment don't work? By the time this calendar wheel doesn't work, it will be New Year's Day 2100. In other words, this calendar ought to last me for the rest of my life.