Steampunk Vehicles

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Mon, 28 May 2012 15:51:15 -0700

Scene from 2020.

Sun, 27 May 2012 15:54:26 -0700

Scene from 2020.

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Sat, 26 May 2012 16:00:34 -0700

In the early 50’s, Cadillac made 20 custom “Harem...

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:46:11 -0700

In the early 50’s, Cadillac made 20 custom “Harem Cars” for the king of Saudi Arabia. They were designed with two rear bench seats for up to six wives, and mirrored glass so that not even the driver could see them. This is the only picture I could find although there is a newspaper article here.

http://www.joesherlock.com/

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:49:24 -0700

You familiar with Deltic engines? Just found out about these and fascinated with them now.

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:25:40 -0700

I was not! I had no idea! A two-stroke diesel with each bank of cylinders containing two opposing pistons:

One of the crankshafts has to rotate whiddershins. Used by the British Navy in minehunting ships because of its “lack of torsional vibrations”.

That sent me off on a string of reading about odd engines like the Junkers Jomo 223 that did the same thing in a diamond with 24 cyl and 48 pistons, and the “split single” folded Uniflow.

By the way, the two-stroke motor is the worst invention in history. Not only does it dump its oil as exhaust, it allows one jerk to ruin hundreds of people’s quiet day at the lake. It has tight competition from the car alarm, annoying thousands while serving no function and stopping no car theft since 1983. Rounding out the top 5 are

cell phones

high-heeled shoes

neckties

…although with the phones it’s really a manners issue that’s the problem, and the other two are supposed to be uncomfortable, that’s why you wear them.

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Thu, 24 May 2012 16:02:10 -0700

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Thu, 24 May 2012 12:08:01 -0700

A repost but whatta car! The evolution of cars is dictated by...

Thu, 24 May 2012 09:29:44 -0700

A repost but whatta car! The evolution of cars is dictated by their environment. As little as 70 years ago, cars existed in an unpaved environment but also in a higher social class than they do now. As the Earth was paved, automakers sought to make cars cheaper, and if everyone can afford one, they no longer needed to convey status. Thus: Plastic jelly beans with wheels. Instead of this.

The First Anglo-Afghan War, known as “Auckland’s...

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:17:00 -0700

The First Anglo-Afghan War, known as “Auckland’s Folly”, occurred between 1839 and 1842. British India feared invasion from Russia via the Khyber Pass. Lord Auckland marched troops to Kabul and installed a puppet Shah. But this pissed the Afghanis off so much that they rioted in the streets, killing officers and dragging their bodies around. On January 6th, 1842, 16,000 British troops (mostly Indian) and camp members retreated down the Kabul River to try and reach Jalalabad.

On January 13th, one man- Dr. William Brydon, staggered up to the gates of Jalalabad on a horse that immediately died. He was missing a part of his skull, severed by a Ghilzai sword. He had stuffed a copy of Blackwood’s Magazine into his hat to keep his head warm, and the magazine absorbed most of the blow and saved his life. Of the 16,000 who left Kabul, he was the only one who made it out. Except for nine prisoners, the rest were slaughtered by the Ghilzai. Thus began Afghanistan’s reputation as a “graveyard of armies”.

In 1878 a diplomatic mission to Kabul was turned back, and thus began the Second Anglo-Afghan war. Forty thousand British soldiers entered Afghanistan, and the Shah personally asked the Russian Tsar for assistance, but was denied. He was killed upon his return and the British forced his son to sign a treaty handing over foreign relations to them. This is the war from which John Watson has returned in the original Sherlock Holmes stories.

During this conflict it was reported that women of the Pathan tribe would castrate captured British soldiers and then execute them using a traditional tribal method: The victim would be staked to the ground and a stick inserted into his mouth to keep it open. Then, one by one, the tribeswomen would piss into his mouth until he drowned in their urine.

In 1919 the King declared war on British India and the Third Anglo-Afghan war began. One officer wrote: “Their (Afghans) rifle fire…was uncomfortably like that of a machine-gun, and almost as effective.” This Handley Page V/1500 had just completed the first England-to-India flight. The RAF fitted it with bombs and, with no other aircraft in the sky, bombed the King’s palace. It did little damage but convinced him to end the war.

A British army chaplain wrote of the first conflict: “a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated”.”

As you can see, this Afghanistan thing has been going on for a long time.

http://www.khyber.org/pashtohistory/aviationhistory/aviationhistory.shtml

I'd bet my life that 'thing' on the front of Red Skull's car is supposed to be a blower, referencing Golden Era sports cars and racing cars, not a winch.

Wed, 23 May 2012 04:12:31 -0700

I think you’re right, like this:

Shushpanzer says it’s a homebuilt.

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:46:42 -0700

Shushpanzer says it’s a homebuilt.

shushpanzer

Tue, 22 May 2012 06:46:57 -0700

shushpanzer

Looks like a Mack. shushpanzer

Mon, 21 May 2012 20:42:07 -0700

Looks like a Mack.

shushpanzer

shushpanzer [edit- look at the adjustable armored radiator...

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:10:00 -0700

shushpanzer

[edit- look at the adjustable armored radiator shutters!]

steampunkvehicles: Samuel Cody and a model of his patent for a...

Sun, 20 May 2012 08:45:38 -0700

steampunkvehicles:

Samuel Cody and a model of his patent for a screw drive tank. British military didn’t bite on this one, guess they didn’t need it for slaughtering Boers. That Sam, though, whatta guy! What panache!

The Cody Manlifter.This guy’s definitely up there in the crowd...

Sun, 20 May 2012 08:43:54 -0700

The Cody Manlifter.

This guy’s definitely up there in the crowd of steampunks-back-then. He was a cowboy who moved to England around 1901 to start a wild west show, and he named himself Samuel Cody in a blatant ripoff of Buffalo Bill. The show fails and his wife returns to America after falling out of a balloon (!). He turns to kitemaking and somehow convinces the British Admirality to let him develop a man-lifting kite to be used as an observation post in the war against the Boers!

First a series of progressively larger kites would be sent up, with the Manlifter taking off last. The… er…. pilot? (Let’s say “red shirt”) would hang below it and transfer messages up and down the string.

From a history:

The man-lifting kites were highly successful, Capt Broke-Smith RE and Leon Cody reached heights of 3,400 feet in kites designed by Cody. The Army were sufficiently impressed to engage Cody as Chief Instructor in Kiting at the Balloon School in Aldershot (1906). Cody was charged with the formation of two kite sections of the Royal Engineers (these were later to form the nucleus of Air Battalion RE, later to become No 1 Squadron Flying Corps, then finally No 1 Squadron RAF).

If you take a look at the Wright Flyer, it’s clearly a box kite with a motor. Airplanes developed out of kites. The British military had a manlifting kite squadron! (“Pip pip men, let’s get those streamers unpacked! Don’t tangle your strings now! I call the fish!”)

In 1909 the Secretary of State for War terminated Cody’s contract, as he “could see no future or military use for aircraft”. In 1910 a guy shot a rifle from a Wright Brothers plane and the U.S. Army became verrrrry interested. Fifty-nine years later a guy lands on the moon.

It seems to me all well and good except for that one thing kites do where they SUDDENLY PLUMMET STRAIGHT TO THE GROUND. Perhaps the Manlifter had a no-plummet feature. The histories don’t really talk about manlifting deaths like they do for early aviation. Cody died in 1913 while joyriding one of his aircraft.

A more in-depth biography:

http://www.heureka.clara.net/surrey-hants/cody.htm

Yes, people build and ride these things today, see here:

http://www.aero.lr.tudelft.nl/~frits/cody.html

We interrupt this blog to bring you this picture of my...

Thu, 17 May 2012 21:59:34 -0700

We interrupt this blog to bring you this picture of my great-uncle Meb Carriker, ornithologist to the Smithsonian, collecting bird lice in Chiñiri, Bolivia, 1934. The pith helmet life isn’t as romantic as it seems. The fellow on the right is his son Mel, what a dreamboat, the dashing son of an ornithologist just there to swing a machete and sort lice, like the introduction to a steampunk porno: “I’m from the Simthsonian. I hear you have a species of bird lice that is heretofore unknown.”

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Thu, 17 May 2012 18:41:56 -0700

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Thu, 17 May 2012 13:21:21 -0700