What is this!

Looks like a splitter for a mechanical tach/rev. control. The pin sticking out goes into a key hole on a cable end and the other ports also have cables that screw into them. Vintage mechanical tachometers had mechanical rev limiters and one of those was needed to operate it.

Cruise control is primarily vacuum operated but I could be wrong in thinking that part is not used in an old cruise control system. There may very well be a speedometer cable attachment somewhere.

Even the old vacuum cruise control systems needed a sensor for driveline speed, and a lot of them used the speedo drive for it.
Still hard to say if that was part of a cuise control or not though, as most of the older ones used a gear drive sensor that just went inline in the speedo cable and didn't split off for another cable.

I suspect the peice pictured attached to the trans, but cant place what else it could have driven besides the speedometer.