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Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)

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12 Comments

  1. Elilka Sieyes Elilka Sieyes December 1, 2011

    Hopefully works now after youtube changed their pesky embed ;)

    I am amused by his glee as he regrets his extreme love of nixie tubes.

    • Mr Tenk Mr Tenk December 1, 2011

      how can you not love nixie tubes?

      • Elilka Sieyes Elilka Sieyes December 1, 2011

        I thought I did, but now feel somewhat inferior in passion compared to said gent.

    • Avariel Falcon Avariel Falcon December 1, 2011

      But… the nixie tubes…

      In the Steampunk world contemporary technologies are extrapolated to their ultimate state of advancement while remaining in their contemporary timeframe.

      So faltering experiments with airships become regular postal and passenger services.

      Theories on the possibility of time travel become a machine that catapults a young inventor into the future.

      Telegraph? Why not wireless telegraph? Or maybe wireless telephony? Or if you can do that then wireless television!

      So if we follow this thread of thought then let us take our primitive diode valve, mix it with our experiments into noble gasses, and crate a nixie tube!

      Job done and not a spot of glue required! ^_^ 

    • Elilka Sieyes Elilka Sieyes December 1, 2011

      Talking of hypnotising rotatey objects, did you see this woman’s zoetrope bike wheel the other day?

       

  2. Cyan Rayna Cyan Rayna December 1, 2011

    I totally agree with that song.

    Etsy is just as bad with that as well btw.

    In fact my current beef is finding people who add print gears to clothing that could easily be Steampunk in it’s own right. It completely ruins it for me for the most part.

  3. Amber Ilsker Amber Ilsker December 1, 2011

    For a while now when I see anything with cogs plonked on it and called steampunk in SL I hear

    the line “If you wanna make it steamy put a gear on it” to the tune of Beyonce’s  song :- Should have put a ring on it, in my head over and over.

     

     

    • Sky Melnik Sky Melnik December 1, 2011

      Ha, Amber, I thought I was the only one who thought of that song! :-)

  4. Edward Pearse Edward Pearse December 2, 2011

    Saw that vid doing the rounds on my typists’ Facebook. Love it.

  5. Erica Fairywren Erica Fairywren December 15, 2011

    Haha, that sums it up quite well. Love this video. I wholeheartedly agree that gears are fine, but they must at least hint at a function. Otherwise, its just laziness. I’ve enjoyed regress-engineering modern conveniences to victorian technological levels, it leads to some quite interesting results. 

    About its use in-world, I have also been debating with myself about whether or not to introduce a line of tube semiconductors at my shop. Can i make them clunky enough to be realistic? could they even be devised without the prior discovery of the electron? What use would people have for them? Could they compete with the well-established mechanical computing industry?

    Nixie tubes are an especial favourite of mine though I think a hair too advanced for the age.  I think that could be tastefully done if large, clunky and flickery enough to indicate a brand new, far-from-perfected, bleeding-edge invention. Something restricted to arcane laboratory equipment and not on everyone’s mantelpiece.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is I appreciate a well thought out re-imagining of technology, not the steam equivalent of sprinkling sparkles on glued paper.

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