Mr Tual wrote to tell me that he recently visited the Aquarium on the South coast of England in Brighton, which apparently is the oldest aquarium in the world!  Opened in 1874, and very much built in the Victorian style of the time, there’s still a goodly amount of Victorian style to be had (a nice image here from an old postcard).  Interestingly, they seem to be caught between playing the Steampunk side up, and playing it down – with the above very Verne-esque submarine found outside and a newly constructed underwater tunnel in wood panels and brass, all very quietly there but not advertised much at all.

Mr Tual explains that there’s a rivetted and patinaed ante-chamber deep within that just oozes Steampunk that leads to the main aquarium, complete with sharks and brass numbering.  Moving downwards you get more detail until finally you enter the tunnel that is done up so convincingly that you fancy that the glass may crack and drown you all, were it not for the thick brass holding it in place. Alas, flash photography is quite unkind on the place, and Mr Tual was a little too excited to get as many photographs as he perhaps wished later, but it sounds like a very pleasant place to visit – with both history, aquatic education and a little bit of newly added Steampunk flavour to boot!  It’s definitely down on my list of places I might endeavour to visit, thank you, Mr Tual!

Just a quick, whimsical image from Mr Hardesty – is it a blimp?  Is it an armoured air-kraken?  No – it’s a flying Steampunk elephant!  chuckles  A nice little picture which you can see larger and with others by Mr Hardesty on his site here.

Mr Iversen wrote to point out the simply mindblowing piece of research and presentation, the Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana! By Mr Jess Nevins (who also wrote companion books to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) with an introduction from Mr Michael Moorcock, this work goes into intricate detail on a wide swathe of the fiction of the Victorian era with entries on such things as Springheeled Jack, the Invisible Man and Vampire Bombs, whatever they maybe. I imagine this to be a book that one does not attempt to read at a sitting, but could find it endlessly fascinating to open a page at a random entry and enjoy a look at the frequently fascinating, often brilliant (and occasionally wonderfully-awful) fantastic literature of the Victorian years.

Not just Steampunk and Victorian Science Fiction, but mysteries, ghost tales, and more. It’s quite a shame that it seems to be sold out most places I look for it, but I’m sure it will return at some point in the future. Thank you, Mr L.T. Intollerant, Ms Katie and Mr Iversen! (I hope your trip went well, Mr Iversen.)

Herr Dokter, Esq. of the forum recently posted about his lovely speaker modification, designed to bring to mind the gramophones of the past. Deceptively small, this hand-held contraption is made from an old car horn, a tea caddy, a scrounged crank handle, some speakers with mechanical operated volume and a tiny MP3 player nestled within!

The crank operates the volume (and was thus why mechanical volume control was required) and the speakers emit through both the perforated front, and through the horn at the back, creating an apparently warm rich combined sound that something this small should not really posess.

More pictures (including an image of the highly packed interior) at the forum thread itself. Congratulations, Herr Dokter – you should be rightly proud of this little gem! For those who prefer their gramophone-styled amplification contraptions in white ceramic, there’s also the phonophone headphones amplification device.

[Edited to correct the creators name from 'Doktor' to the correct 'Dokter'.  Apologies Dokter!]