Monday Mystery - What Is This?

The twine part looks like a gangion as normally tied to a fishhook.

Ruler, bent paper clip, and some twine...

You forgot the thumb and index finger...

I only looked at the first photo, then lost interest...

Commercially produced item. Somewhat specialized but not a "DIY thing" or "custom item". I would guess we had in active use about 20,000 of them.

A garrote for executing small rodents?

You found my tie clip! Where was it?

Coat hanger for doll clothes?

Ok ok....sheessh

Looks like an old IUD

Not a very good hint but a true statement anyway. With computer systems becoming more powerful this has not been driven obsolete but it probably has been driven out of production.

Pull the string one way to install it. Pull the string the other way to remove it.

Once upon a time it was probably in an office supply catalog.

Is it a coat hook for partition walls?

No winners today.

It is a clip to close a cardboard box. Sliding the clip through the open slot the bottom loop part goes under the short cardboard flap that went down first. Then the two wide parts of the clip spread out over the top cardboard flap. Box securely closed.

OK, I can hear your negative comments from here. But way back when this was a very useful item.

Once upon a time, far, far away, I had a summer job at a very large company. All “active” paperwork would be held in each department. Most paperwork had a retention policy and had to be save and available for a while after it was no longer "active". Time cards might have been on a 3 month retain then automatically destroy cycle. Terminal loading tickets might have been on a 6 month policy. Account receivable and credit card applications had some policy. It is too far back for me to remember but we probably had 100 different groups of records we stored. Most had either automatic destruction dates or automatic review for destruction dates. Some items such as legal paperwork had a permanent retention policy.

This was back when images had to be stored on film and therefore keeping paper was more important than it is today. We had over 30,000 cubic feet of paper and it was in about 20,000 cardboard boxes. The shelves were 18 feet tall and we had 2 fork lifts with “elevator cabs” that we would use to retrieve and replace records. With 20,000 boxes the shelves were spaced far enough apart for a closed box but not far enough apart for open boxes. In addition the papers, especially the permanent retention ones, should not get dirty or dusty in the records warehouse. Thus, we had 20,000 of these clips to keep the boxes closed.

The clips also helped with safety. When loading and unloading twenty-some boxes from a pallet 18 feet above the concrete warehouse floor it was important that the top of the boxes don't flap open and get snagged.

I wonder if NetMaker can use one of these to catch fish?

It is from the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark - hiding the ark again, in plain sight, among thousands of identical boxes. Bible trivia: there are three arks referenced in the bible - the ark of the covenant; Noah's ark; and the bulrush ark of the infant Moses.

This is sort of the same idea...

https://www.bigvalleypackaging.com/box-clips/rbc100-wire-roberts-box-clips-flaps-closed-holders

I bet you could use this style paperclip, turned 45 degrees as below, with the horizontal part outside and the vertical part under the inside flap.

Installed the BCLIP-RBC100 would do the same thing. Installing and removing often requires a bit of force. With this design you have quite a bit of a leverage arm and you will probably be bending clips. The ones I used long ago had the strong string attached at the center. There was no tendency to bend the metal.

I thought it was the only thing left after the "Caption This" plane made an emergency landing.