Here is picture of an old piece of electronic equipment that I found in my father in laws garage. Does anyone know what it is? I've attached some pictures.
Possibly a heating unit? If you dig in further you could confirm this, I suspect heating coils from what I can see of the ceramic insulators in the second picture...
My guess is a power supply. I think I see large diodes in parallel, front panel binding posts and possibly some large capacitors with ceramic terminal insulators.
Or it could be a cold war era mil spec coffee urn heater.
With the two pictures, I vote with KJ6EAD. The covered section is probably a
transformer. It's probably a high current power supply.
But CocaCola and KJ6EAD are right, it's going to get pretty toasty in operation.
My vote is on a power supply too. I don't see any reason for heavy duty rectifiers to power heating elements. Was your father in-law a ham or machinist?