-8017461996684766725

Lastly, because I only just saw this over at BoingBoing, a video from 1908 of Moscow in the snow. It’s beautiful and very slightly haunting – with cheerfully marching guards with their bayonetted guns, giant cannons next to the palace walls (and I do mean giant) to people skiing through the park or making their way across a busy, horse-drawn carriage filled street.

It looks so cold, and yet quite friendly. A step back in time to see the world when Victorian science fiction was being written, when Verne was still new and the moon so very far away.

Is it a spaceman? A creature from Mars? Some form of mechanical man? Nope, it’s an early atmospheric diving suit from 1924 by Pop Peress, designed to protect the user from the pressures of deep diving.

Beaty, previously of the Sketchup Steampunk Moon Base, had been searching for appropriate protective wear for the inhabitents, and found the following page of historical images from the early days of mechanical diving - Diving History Cards. Scroll down to cards 21 to 24 to see the amazing early designs for diving suits; some of which were perfectly impractical! When truth (such as the Peress diving suit above) is so very strange, it only serves to make our Steampunk fiction all the more plausible!

Mr Edgar Park very kindly pointed out the above absurdly pretty steam kit that as far as I can tell, is a steam engine and plant in one. While Mr Park found the above at a page called The Great Toy Steam Company, in my search for more information, I also found the delightfully named The Engineers Emporium (in Warwickshire) – which has a great deal of information concerning the construction. Such as:

“The boiler is of multitude, silver soldered heavy gauge copper construction, fitted with ceramic gas burner with both main and pilot jets, electric ignition, water and steam pressure gauges, safety and vacuum valves and whistle.”

The downside? Oh yes, there is a downside – while a contraption like this would no doubt be something to leave to grandchildren in a Will, they are according to the website you visit, either $4,000 or available to buy on appointment only. Yes – if you need to ask, then we can’t afford it. sighs Still someone must be buying them – several someone’s who love steam as much, if not more than, we do.

Oh and it was a mighty battle – trying to get my new tutorial up in a WordPress page. Such fighting with bolds and paragraphs! But despite that, my new tutorial for hastily making a pair of costume goggles from traditionally “Blue Peter”-like materials (toilet rolls etc) is now up. You can see it in the pages now listed under Steampunk Resources.

I apologise for the formatting of it, it really was being quite unreasonable.

Is it ironic that a shop with the address NewEnergyShop should have so very many steam engines? Including kits showing you the principles behind Hero’s engine of the 1st Century AD? Possibly, but I’m certainly not about to hold it against them – not when they sell such beautiful and educational steam toys and kits. From large transparent steam engines (so you can see the workings through the glass) to simple Hero Engine recreations, to the above miniature steam trike – they will sell (quite pricy, but I imagine high quality) steam demonstration devices both assembled and in kit form for those who wish them.

And I must say hello and thank you to the recently joined, Sudden Device for sending me the link. Such pretty steam engines, no doubt I’ll be sighing over the page for weeks now.

The very kind Lady Hoffman, of previous pinhole camera and metal book fame, wanted to share with me the works of an artist called Wayne Martin Belger – who amongst other things, makes delightful art-pinhole cameras like the one above (entitled ‘Untouchable’). Apparently, he uses his many pinhole cameras to also take photographs that you’ll find on his site, but in my mind, the pinhole cameras are really the stars. Look out in particular for ‘Classic’, ‘Skull’ and ‘Underwater’ – though my favourite is most certainly ‘Untouchable’ above.

While it could do with a little more brass, it’s certainly got leanings of Steampunk there. Far from it looking like a camera, you’d more imagine that some devilishly clever scientist has his purified aether vials in there for safekeeping.

Well, my eyes were truly opened today! I had been advised of an absolutely wonderful looking book (I will make a seperate post about it, but my mail program is down right now so I cannot give credit yet) and went down to my local WH Smith (stationers and bookshop) to see if I might aquire a copy of it. But lo! What I found astonished me – in the ‘young adult’ and ‘kids’ book section was a veritable avelaunche of Steampunk books for the younger, more adventure driven reader!

While I didn’t find the book in question (I will continue to look) I did find the book above and several others – but this is the one I purchased today. Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve is a multiple prize winning book, and the first in a series like it – this one occupies a strange Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk genre where the world was ravaged by war and in the aftermath, whole cities became mobile engines roving across a damaged landscape, hunting smaller settlements like architectural carnivores. The book starts in London, a hulking yet tired mechanical contraption that scours the land for prey. The engineers try to keep the cogs turning and the navigators show the way. We start in the Museum, where skeletons of long extinct creatures hang like mobiles from the ceiling, swaying with the rhythmic motion of the city.

And this is just one of many books! A silent revolution has been right under my nose. Expect more information on these Steampunk young person books – hopefully filled with adventure in the skies!

Mr Hildebrandt informed me about a PDA/Palmtop game that he had his eye on – a game by the name of Syberia. Now, while I do not own one of these contraptions, I did find that the game was available for the normal sized PC, and indeed that it spawned a sequal. What is it? Well, while I’ve yet to play it (I’m downloading the demo from here) it seems to be an adventure game set in relatively modern times, telling the tale of someone sent to a tiny town in the French Alps, famous for a family that creates amazingly detailed and lifelike automatons and clockwork devices.

While it may not be Steampunk in the purest form, I admit to being very intregued by it’s focus on the clockwork toymaker family, and the mystery of the heir to this multigenerational automaton making heritage. A glowing review, and many screenshots can be found over at Gamespot, if you’d like to know more.

Not long after I had been terribly impressed by the worlds first commercial tracked vehicle, being as it was terribly Steampunk, a gentle reader who I know only as Jonnotantan went one better and drew my attention to another very early piece of curiously mobile farm machinery – the Darby Steam-Digger. Not only was this curious device build around the late 1800′s and steam powered – but it carried itself around the fields of its work on six mechanical feet. That’s right – this thing walked the fields, like a giant metal crab, ploughing and aeriating as it went!

Apparently though, this first prototype was a little to bouncy and jumpy and later versions reverted to having wheels in some areas. A shame, but still – the walking steam tractor was built and existed. That puts a smile on my face, just to know it.

Apparently Mr Mike Estee was cleaning out his abode when he was reminded of a comic that he owns – the Scarlet Traces comic from Dark Horse Comics. Based on the aftermath of the War of the Worlds in an alternative history that sees the British Empire the most powerful and feared power on the planet, equipped as it is with the retrofitted martian technology. But all is not well, of course, and an ex-military officer turned gentleman explorer and his manservant look to be the ones to get to the bottom of the mysterious deaths. There’s a taster on the page, if you’d like to read a few of the first few pages, and I’ll close with a quote from the intrepid two – my favourite from the sample:

Captain Autumn: “Sergeant, I once saw you beat a bengal tiger unconscious with your bare hands. Reduce a hulking Cossak to tears with nothing but a hearty laugh and a pair of manicure scissors. However, the thing that impresses me most about you is your irrefutable Scots logic.” Archie Currie: “Ye’d no be takin’ the piss would ye, Sir?”

Classic smirks