My dad recently gave me this battery charger, an Allstate 6/12-volt “Battery Booster,” which was a fixture in our garage as I was growing up. The last time I actually used this device was to juice up the dead battery in my ’74 VW Super Beetle.

The unit was originally purchased around 1957, according to my dad, and thanks to my father-in-law’s extensive library of Sears catalogs I found this similar unit being sold in the Fall of 1962:

I haven’t plugged it in yet, but I’ve been assured it still works…