Moe Ratio, Indeterminate Object

I was digging through a drawer in search of a particular item, when I came across a page with this doodle:

The picture amuses me, so have posted it right here. From other clues on the page, I ascertain that the scribblings where commited to paper in April 2001.

Also on the same page as the above drawing was the phrase "Moe Ratio". If memory serves me, I'd gotten the notion that there must be an optimum ratio of Moe Howard type personalities to Stooge Personality (as well as Stooges in the general population).

We know the classic ratio is one Moe Howard per Stooge Unit (Three including the Moe), but as the population expands and society seemingly devolves into a state of drooling nincompoopery, with a growing number of imbeciles, chuckle-heads, dunderbeans, numbskulls, addlepates, lame-brains, and ninnyhammers in all walks of life (though there seems to be a disproportionate gain in corporate management and government), will there be enough Moes to Noggin-Clonk and Eye-Poke the legions of blundering sub-morons? I figure the reform schools, penitentiaries and clown colleges are not turning out enough leadership caliber (Moe) stooges, so the basic Stooge Unit may have to be increased dramatically, to perhaps fifteen or twenty individuals. Yes, the days of the "Three" Stooges may be at an end, and we will look back fondly at a simpler time, when all the names one had to remember were Moe, Larry, Curly and sometimes Shemp...

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Now, what was it I was looking for in the drawer? Ahhh - it was this thing (or "things" seeing I've got two of these strange objects)

No one I've shown the things, patented on june 26th, 1917, can identify what they are. They are merely a key with a spring for tention. It doesn't appear to be a part of some larger device. I have speculated that it may be something to train the finger for operating a telegraph or other device that needs to be pressed.

While we are on the subject of obsolete objects, here we have pictures of a punchcard and Flowcharting Template, each from the Data Processing classes I took a quarter-century ago.

The Template has plastic bag it slides into, which has various instructions on it, including this paragraph:

"The symbols on this envelope and the enclosed template conform to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) International Standard 1028 -- "Information Processing -- Flowchart Symbols", and American National Stndard, Flowchart Symbols and Their Usage in Information Processing, ANSI X3.5-1970. IBM usages beyond the abouve standards are three symbols: off-page connector, transmittal tape, and keying, which are identified IBM"

Class dismissed.