Mr Dantes, of the forum and DeviantArt, has created this most marvellous of Steampunk costumes! With a brass breastplate, back-mounted Aetheric Generator and really rather formiddable looking gun – this is a gentleman (or rather, a well spoken scoundrel) who would trawl the skies for tea and plunder in a Steampunk world. I very much admire the skill and detail that has gone into this – there are hinged pocket covers on the breastplate so that the pocketwatch may still be used, for example.

I’d recommend looking at the two links above for more pictures, in particular the aetheric generator has been cunningly crafted and has a wonderful blue glowing unnatural look to it that you don’t expect to see without a hefty special effects budget. In fact, the whole set itself looks like a hero-quality movie/film costume – it certainly wouldn’t look out of place on a suitably steamy set somewhere. Very well done, Mr Dantes – and good luck for the future, particularly your costume making commissions!

Just a quick update to the Wallpapers page – three new images from the Museum of Victorian Science posted below in three sizes each and there’s one widescreen proportioned image too. I realise some may find them a little ‘noisy’ for backdrops, but others may find them suitable.

For the last three days I had been on a short holiday/vacation to the historic town of Whitby on the east coast of England. My main reason for visiting was to see the Museum of Victorian Science in nearby Glaisdale. On arrival, and after paying, the owner ushered us into the hallway of his house and checked to make sure we weren’t about to either drop dead (pacemakers) or explode (mobile phones or blackberries). Then, he lead us into the museum/room itself.

To say that I was astonished would be to understate most cruelly – it was a single room, no larger than the floorsize of a decent car and yet it was from floor to ceiling covered in contraptions and thingumajigs of brass, glass and wood. In some places the shelves groaned under such things stacked three deep, and the owner (Mr Swift) had constructed ingenous temporary shelves that were moved from place to place to allow the shuffling of things of interest. And oh – there was so much of interest! The majority of the two hour talk involved electrostatic contraptions powered one of his handsome Wimshurst machines that delighted us with handcranked four-inch sparks – this provided the magical, Victorian, lightning-power for display pieces that spun, flexed, swung and rolled with seemingly unnatural grace.

Beyond that there was the history of the X-Ray (and I learned how to pronounce Röntgen, finally), the research that went into discovering what eventually turned out to be the electron, lots of fun with Radium, a Jacobs Ladder and more besides – all demonstrated with displays old or remade by the owner himself.

Speaking of the owner, he’s such a very knowledgable man and gloriously demonstrates so much that Steampunk adores – an ex-horologist and retired educational science technician with a love for brass and wood and the wonderful drama of Victorian science and a deep feeling of dismay at the modern watering down of science education.  He makes many of the demonstration models himself with a lathe and some cunning. I’d recommend a visit most highly to anyone who finds themselves in the area, and should you do so please mention Steampunk – it would be very nice to let him know there are quite a few people who like Victorian science almost as much as he does!

Over at Neatorama today, they posted about the War of the Worlds webcomic from Dark Horse comics.  An adaption by Ian Edginton and art by D’Istraeli, this looks like a rather faithful adaption of the classic HG Wells tale of invaders from Mars.  With heat rays and human resistance, this is one of the wonderful ancestors of Steampunk.  Enjoy!

On wonderous joy – while I’m sure a large and happy proportion of the aethernet knows about The House on the Rock, it had managed to slip under my consciousness like a naughty child beneath a tablecloth.  But no longer – thanks to Mr Vernian Process, he found the most amazing collection of photographs of this place – a place filled with so much wonder and oddness that purely by accident some of it falls soundly in the realms of Steampunk.

Huge rooms of machinery with stained glass lights and shining brass drums, stairways that function as bookcases so well that it makes me terribly sad that I live in a flat/apartment, whole barbers offices done out with fantastic stoves and whole rooms of ornamental guns, eggs, masks and puppets!  My mind reels at the sheer amount of heavily emotive relics in this place – no corner left unadorned, no wall left normal and bare.  A great deal of it can’t really be said to be Steampunk, but should you adore the strange and the beautiful mind of a collector, then you’ll be in very good hands.  I imagine, that to actually visit the place in Wisconsin, US, would be akin to turning off your adult brain and letting a thousand fairytales paint the inside of your skull.

What a curious creation this is – a computer case design (the creator mentions that as there is no original case, it is not a mod as such) based around a retro look that is very pleasantly Steampunk called the DialupPC.  EnVaDoR, the creator, was asked by Intel to create a case on short notice and this was combined with some quick antique shopping to create the unusual case above.  With a very respectable spec list, the most quirky aspect to this case is that while normal sound will emerge from the front of the case, should you recieve a Skype call or chat initiation, you may pick up the telephone handset to switch the speaker and microphone functionality to the phone automatically.  Very clever indeed.

There are many more photographs on the site, including both internal and before and after shots. Thank you, Mr Brass Alchemist – you were right, I do like this!  Shame about the coasters, somehow – when the rest is so very nice.

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!]