Senior crew, can you identify this tool?

That's well before my time, the earliest general purpose bus I could dig up was:


That's not even enough pins for an early 4bit computing bus AFAIK?


Got a pic of the other side of that board?

I can only identify three of the ICs. It's one for the Road Show I think. '73 was two years after Intel released 4004, its first 4-bit CPU. 8008 released a year and your find's 8-bit world. I think your guess that it's a blinky light 8-bit data indication unit might be right. It's an interesting sub-set of the bus connector atop the box.

Maybe a PSU, programming board for an 8008 CPU card? Looks to be something a classmate's computer science prof. dad was playing with building his first microcomputer that year.

1973 really takes me back! Second semester of my freshman year, end of the draft and my backup plan to visit a Marine Corps recruitment station.

1973 date codes on ICs puts this into homebrew 8008 development board territory. What's the contact count on the slot? WAG would be base/PSU/manual programming input unit 8 (inverting data bit switches) for someone's 8008 build.