I have never seen on e of those in person but I would buy one if I ran across it just for the hell of it! That would look great in the garage.
I would imagine that these would have been deployed in large factories where you might have several hundred guys working on a shift. There are many large automotive plants in the Detroit area that could have supported several of these in the "good old days" where you might have had thousands of guys working on any given shift!
Tim