Have you ever found something in a box in the attic and didn’t know what it was? These are items that may have been very familiar to our grandparents, but the idea of what they were able to do has been lost to time.

That includes the picture of what we have for you above. Even though your grandparents and great-grandparents may have used this frequently, it is something that very few people use in this form today. In fact, the Internet had a very difficult time figuring out what it was.

In case you haven’t figured it out, it’s a hand mixer. It was used in the kitchen to mix food, and it really saved a lot of time compared to mixing it with a spoon. Of course, it wasn’t electric, but the rotating parts still stirred things very quickly.

The patent for a mixer with rotating parts was given in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1865. A whisk came not all that long after in 1857, and another eggbeater was patented in 1859.

These continued to be a very popular part of kitchen appliances, and even though we have items that work automatically today, these still worked great to save time in the kitchen, which was why they were so popular.

It’s always interesting when you see things like these because they were so popular many years ago. Who knows, perhaps 100 years from now, people may be wondering what it was we used in the kitchen.