This picture has been going around 'the internet' for the last few days...:
What the photo is showing is a line from IBM under the banner of 5080 and was a graphics system or CAD (computer aided design) system known as either CADAM or CATIA, designed to be attached to a powerful mainframe.
The 5080 was made up of the 5081 Display, the 5085 Graphics Processor Unit (which also handled 3270 control to the mainframe) and 5088 Graphic Channel Control Unit ('channel' from the mainframe). Obviously the mainframe itself did all the hard computing whilst turning those sums into graphics were handled by the 5085. Optional user-controlled extras were the lighted Programmable Function (PF) key unit, graphics tablet & puck, mouse, dials, light pen and plotter. This was highly specialised hardware and very expensive, in a world where computers barely had graphics and nobody knew what a GUI or a mouse was. These workstations predated the 1984 Apple Macintosh 128k and by far other GUIs like OS/2, Windows, Workbench or X Windows for Unix systems.
Here is a doc outlining some of these input devices.
It was succeeded by the IBM 6090 but soon after workstations such as the RS/6000 could do all this and more, as well as x86 Intellistations.
There is another picture of one of these being marketed at the time, about 35% into this article.
So, what is the arrow pointing to? Well it's something I couldn't help picking up a few months back from Japan.
Well it was IBM Dials, used as a bunch of 8 configurable rotation wheels which could be used to manage CAD workstations. Each one could be assigned a function like roll, rotate, zoom, pan, tilt and so on. It was programmable by the software which was running on the machine and the dials don't have any labels, so really the 8 dials can do whatever the software is programmed to make them do!
I did see there were various similar 'dial' peripherals made by a variety of companies of the time - I think including HP and SGI.
The reason I was interested in this picture is because I already own a set of Dials from the later 6090 and I've included some close-up gallery pics below. My set are cream but they did also come in black. It's interesting how this design allows you to either twizzle the dials using your thumb and forefinger or use just a forefinger to run up and down the outer serrated edge of each dial.
This official description of the slightly earlier 5085 dials does a good job at describing them:
The IBM 5085 Dials Feature is a desktop unit with eight dials arranged in two rows of four dials. The Dials Feature is used to input analog positional information. The dials can turn completely around without any stops. The software uses the information provided by the Dials Feature.
The RT PC 5080 Peripheral Cable Kit is required to attach the Dials Feature to the IBM RT PC System Unit. The cable from the Peripheral Cable Kit attaches to the end of the Dials Feature cable. The Peripheral Cable Kit also includes a clamping device that encloses the connectors.
Note that on the label it does say "Manufacturered FOR IBM" which generally means they had lots of outside help manufacturing it.
Here is an older reddit post with some decent close-ups of some of these input devices. And another here where some clever guy has them working on a modern computer.