The Horn Antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, was constructed in 1959 to support Project Echo--the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's passive communications satellite project which bounced a radio signal off of a large aluminum coated balloon in orbit.

The instrument is renowned for finding the cosmic microwave background radiation - the red-shifted light from the Big Bang around 14 billion years ago. The two researchers (Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson) were looking for the source of pervasive radio interference. They scanned the sky with the telescope's horn and found the signal coming from everywhere ... and a check with physicists at Princeton University identified the signal (and won the Nobel Prize for Penzias and Wilson).

The model rotates on the base (azimuth), but making the horn rotate (elevation) is problematic. The wheel can be dropped loosely into its frame, but would need a bearing where the base meets the instrument shack.