My friend and fellow citizen of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Len Solomon demostrates his Oomphalapompatronium! 

I am just speechless.  More here und here via Burnlab

Look what I found in my mailbox today!

Sometime during Maker Faire last year Gareth Branwyn mentioned to me that he would be editing a "Lost Knowledge" issue of Make: Magazine and that I should consider writing an article. Of course, I immediately replied: "Dude! count me in!"

UPDATE: Plans for my Wimshurst Machine are now available here!

Long before I got into Steampunk, in fact long before that name had been coined, I had a love for scientific instruments.

I would rescue the catalogues of instruments and demonstrations from the dumpster behind our school at the end of each year when the science teachers would discard them and take them home to pour over like the Sears xmas Wishbook (or maybe the lingerie supplement ;-) )!

Here's a marvellous resource for the Steampunk fabricator, with hundreds and hundreds of pictures of vintage scientific instruments organized by area of investigation. It's a place I often look to for inspiration.

I am not quite sure what is going on here, but as near as I can tell this is an offer for a beautiful brass orrery kit. An orrery is a mechanical simulacrum of the Solar System with clockwork designed such that the planets of the orrery move in the same relation to each other as the actual planets do in the Solar System

It appears from the google translated page that you will receive a different kit of parts each week until your orrery is complete.

It seems to me that we used to have kits like this here but they faded and disappeared sometime in the last twenty or so years, pity that.

[Thanks Jellyfish!]

Geissler tubes were made primarily at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th as curiosities. They came in a great variety of sizes, shapes, and colors.

From Wikipedia:

Geissler tubes were mass produced from the 1880s as entertainment devices, with various spherical chambers and decorative serpentine paths formed into the glass tube. When the tube was handled (the terminals were insulated) the shape of the plasma changed. Some tubes were very elaborate and complex in shape and would contain chambers within an outer casing. If these were spun at high speed a visual disk of color was seen due to persistence of vision. (Somewhat similar devices in the form of stationary globes are now produced and sold for personal amusement.) As an educational tool they are also used to demonstrate the movement of electrons and the principles of a vacuum.

Mike Harrison has some lovely examples here as well as an incredible amount of other fascinating things on his site like this sinister and creepy mercury arc rectifier!

I have legions of minions (both cybernetic and meatiform) so if you say 'steampunk' anywhere on the interwebs I'm liable to pop up in UR LJ or UR Flickr within hours.  Such was the case this morning when I discovered this marvellous machine built by banjo player Will Segerman for a musical group aptly named The Clockwork Quartet.

Will's Flickr stream is here (be sure to check out the Blunderbuss and Transparent Armour!) and if I were you I would sign up to the Clockwork Quartet's Facebook page. If these folks musicianship match Will's craftsmanship - they are going to be awesome indeed!

More pics after the cut!