Central Intelligence Agency
CIA technicians invented and used this "Elephant Counter" in the 1960s to count people and supplies moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam to South Vietnam along the borders of Laos and Cambodia. Many of the Laotian trail watchers whom CIA recruited could not read or write, let alone understand English. So the device featured pictograms representing troops, trucks, motorcycles, carts, bicycles, tanks, cannons, small artillery, missiles, donkeys and the occasional elephant, a common beast of burden in Laos. A toggle switch sent data to an airplane.