I had the priveledge last year of doing an archaelogical dig at College Park, Md., the oldest continuously operating airport in the world. Among the many little "bits" of stuff we found were some curious things that look like short pieces of non-metallic wire encased in a carbon or graphite. Click on the link for a photo:
http://home.earthlink.net/~mffowler/cpartifact.jpg
The current technical name for these, of which we found more than 20, is "thingies." I'm hoping that someone familiar with 1900-1930s technology can help us narrow that down a bit!