Tesla Coils and Sparks Fly at White Mischief!

“On Saturday March 27 in London, England, White Mischief is holding a massive multi-room steampunk party called The Great Exhibition. White Mischief will be celebrating three years of neo-Victorian entertainments with its biggest line-up yet.

Some of the UK’s best-known exponents of steampunk craft will be in attendance, including Prof. Maelstromme’s steam laboratory; a steamdrone and steam cannon from The Clockwork Quartet; steampunk art and installations; and Victorian costumes.

Music includes Thomas Truax, whose self-made instruments include the Hornicator and a mechanical drum machine; steam-powered piano from Tankus The Henge; pith-helmeted MC Elemental, whose “Cup of Brown Joy”was a YouTube hit; posh rapper Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer; and Oompah Brass, who play pop hits in an oompah style.

Stage performances will include visible bolts of lightning being conducted by Voltini in a demonstration of the experiments that Tesla made famous. Plus angle grinding, a flea circus, a man climbing into a six foot bubble, visitors from Oblivia and a chainsaw routine described by Simon Cowell as “one of the most stupid acts I’ve ever seen.”

The Great Exhibition

After yesterday’s  set of large steam engines, let’s have a look at the other end of the spectrum.  Here are some of the works of Iqbal Ahmed, an engineer/machinist in India. He currently holds the Guinness World record for the smallest working steam engine.

Small:

Smaller:

Smallest:

Time to put some steam back into Steampunk. For your enjoyment, a few pics from my collection, showing some rather large stationary steam engines.

Most of these are in the 8000HP range, with  one (the first one shown),  being 12,000hp (it powered the steel rolling equipment in a rolling mill)

illogika Studios (a new indie game developer in Montreal) recently released our first iPhone game called Steam Wars. It is a steampunk styled game where two steam powered robots fight each other on tiny planets using artillery weapons.

Steam Wars Video preview

Steam Wars is currently available in the apps section ofiTunes .

With a brand new website and a full section in english, I invite you to meet French gentleman Maurice Sandalette and his lovely assistant, Miss Prann.

Brilliantly funny and definitely steampunk, “Les Historiettes de Monsieur Sandalette” are a serie of daguerrotype-novels full of aliens, tentacles and sea monsters.

Enjoy!

The Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition, will be  coming to Emeryville, CA March 12th through the 14th.

The Exhibition is a 3-day event which includes presentations, panel discussions, lectures and interactive workshops, as well as evening entertainment, a huge vendor area, a Museum of Curiosities and more. Open to all ages, Steam-X  takes the best elements of traditional science fiction and fantasy conventions, and combines them with the passion, ingenuity, and hands-on workshops of Maker events, and places it all in a steam-powered, neo-Victorian setting that spans the 1830s through the early 1910s, from the cultured salons of gaslit London to the rugged coast of San Francisco.

We are looking for Steampunk sites to partner with, exchange banners, and help get the word out.

More information including contacts  at: Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition.

I literally just stumbled upon this having met the webmaster last night at a party.  For anyone planning travel to, or who may live in Barcelona, they have your fix over at Steampunk SP!

http://www.steampunksp.es/portal/

Also direct link to their Spanish Language Steampunk forum:

http://foro.steampunksp.es/

This struck my eye back in December but I’m afraid I was lazy and I never mentioned it, so here we are!

The Volcania Volunteers are some incredible artists for design junkies like myself.  First off they have a very nice looking site:  http://www.vulcaniavolunteers.com/

They are an organization which provides highly accurate models of items and diagrams of Harper Goff’s Nautilus (the one from the Disney movie 20,000 leagues under the sea).

Taken from the news on their site:

“For the past 30+ years, Harper Goff’s Nautilus has been rendered in many forms & styles, but not accurately And never as if she were an actual, fully functional vessel of that era.
A new approach was long over-due & is at the core of the V.V.’s – reason for being.

When & where Nautilus models are concerned,
…there are some fairly good models of the Harper Goff’s Nautilus readily available, but the V.V. take issue with the complete lack of progress or initiative to improve – beyond utilizing the original pre-production Disney-Plans.

Using the original ‘Dsiney’ plans – never fails to result in a slightly misshaped Nautilus, that is also missing crucial details.
And we’re Not merely ‘rivet-counting’ – Discerning eyes, recognize the shortfall of Plans-Boats. (modelmaker’s term: for most commercial Nautilus models)
The Hero & other Nautilus models in the film do Not match the Disney plans, …so how could using the Wrong plans – result in the making of a good & accurate model?

Simply put…
The Vulcania Volunteers intend to Change for the Better,
the way people look at & appreciate – Harper Goff’s Nautilus!”

Well worth a look.  Sorry for no pictures on our post.  I forgot to ask for permission and didn’t want to break any copyright laws.

This has been Shaunathan Sprocket reporting from under the sea.

Denver artist Jonathan Alberico has created two fully functional steam punk guns. Black Betty, a dual barrel pistol uses flash paper to shoot fire balls. Doris is a beastly air cannon that fires bouncey ball at high enough speeds to rip through boxes and even bounce back.

Doris the Blunderbuss

In a recent trawl of the Internet, these turned up. Steampunk and motorcycles, seems a good fit to me..

The Bobster Trike by Zeel Designs:

Or perhaps Baron Margo’s ‘Phantom”  – League of Extraordinary  Gentlemen, anyone?

Or, one could take a Huffy bicycle, a 50cc Honda engine, and add lots of creativity:

And finally, if you want real steam power.. The Hubbard Steamcycle:

For me thought there is one motorcycle that will always bring back some great memories: the 1953 Series C Vincent Black Shadow. I had possession of one of these magnificent beasts for a while back in my motorcycling days 40 years or so ago..