The Secret of the Desert: across Arabia by chariot-boat-tank

I wrote previously about the author Edward Douglas Fawcett, after seeing Kevin Dixon's Torquay’s Other History post The Science Fiction of Edward Douglas Fawcett, and linked to his 1893 novel Hartmann the Anarchist; or The Doom of the Great City. As an update, I just found among the growing collection of digitised works at the British Library another of his SF works, the 1895 The Secret of the Desert, or How We Crossed Arabia in the “Antelope“.

Diamonds

Another musical recommendation, in case Ola Gjeilo was too normal. I just ran into Steam Powered Giraffe: a brilliant performance art group popular on the steampunk convention circuit. Their persona is a group of robots, allegedly built in the late 1800s, who perform sketches, improvisation, and music. Check out their official website www.steampoweredgiraffe.com and YouTube channel.

I just love the above embedded video, one of their handful of singles. It's a cover of Rihanna's Diamonds, which I rate highly anyway, but with an added edge. It's a powerfully-sung version of Diamonds by David Michael Bennett as "The Spine", one of the robot characters who's the 'straight man' in the act. The outro reveals it as The Spine's reverie, which I'm sure many of us can relate to: of expressing his inner lyrical ecstatic self, before he's brought back to reality and his mundane companions, and left only with the regretful thought that "I am a diamond". Ignore the slightly comic presentation and robot giraffe: this is a superb cover, and I think I like it more than the Rihanna original.

- Ray

Addometer

Ptak Science Books just featured a very nice post - Beautiful Techno-Art & Invention: Circular Adding Machines, 1850-1900 - featuring technical illustrations from US patents for various rotary adding machines. I haven't looked into the background, but patents aren't proof of technical feasibility, and quite possibly many of these devices didn't make it to the stage of practical use. However the W Lang adding machine (pictured above) certainly was feasible, because I have one of exactly this type.

This British-sold "Addometer" works on a straightforward principle; you use a metal stylus to turn a dial to add and subtract, and overflow cascades to the adjacent dial. A slide lever clears everything to zero. (see YouTube demo - I can't show you the workings, as the casing is riveted shut, but the Vintage Calculators Web Museum Addometer page has pictures). These multi-spindle adders were a popular, robust and successful design; they recur in 19th / early 20th century patents, with no clear attribution trail, and continued in use right through to the end of the mechanical calculator era.

This particular one - dating I think from the 1920s-30s - is both technologically and conceptually obsolete: it adds Sterling currency - pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings.  As the front logo says, it's US-made (by the Reliable Typewriter and Adding Machine Co., Chicago, Illinois) but the brass logo on the edge has been milled out, and the device rebadged to "Taylor's 74, Chancery Lane, London": a firm that historically sold typewriters and other office equipment.

I'm mildly puzzled that I don't remember any such devices from my childhood. My mother worked in various offices as a secretary, and took me there sometimes when I was on school holidays (this would be very early 1960s). I don't remember seeing anything but typewriters and duplicating machines. Were these calculating devices so expensive, or so cumbersome, that they weren't widely used?

- Ray

Glue some gears on it ...

Just glue some gears on it and call it steampunk;
That's the trendy fashion nowadays!
A copper-painted chunk of some 1980s junk
Will fetch a pretty penny on eBay!
- Reginald Pikedevant

A few days ago Felix Grant sent me a clipping from the Independent on Sunday, Steampunk! Introducing Britain's latest fashion craze ("The retro-futuristic blend of Victoriana and sci-fi is the next big thing to hit the high streets, forecasters say"), and Time magazine just covered the same topic: Will Steampunk Really Be the Next Big Fashion Trend?.  Both articles draw on the same IBM news release based on its "Social Sentiment Index": IBM Social Sentiment Index Predicts New Retail Trend in the Making ("Analytics points to the 'Birth of a Trend,' steampunk aesthetic to pervade pop culture in 2013").

I immediately thought of Reginald Pikedevant's song (above), inspired by the category Not Remotely Steampunk on Regretsy, a site devoted to documenting examples of naff art from Etsy, a marketplace for "handmade and vintage items".

I do rather like the idea of steampunk becoming a fashion, but I agree with RP that studding retro clothing with non-functional gears is not what appeals to me about its possibilities; I want geeky retro-styled hardware that's functional. For example: for some years - despite varifocal glasses - I've been using a folding lorgnette to get higher magnification. It would be nice if steampunk glasses with a tidily-incorporated loupe become mainstream fashionable.

- Ray

Vampire Poets!

It's Charles Babbage's 220th birthday today, and if you want a spot of relevant, erudite and heavily-footnoted post-Christmas steampunk webcomic entertainment, I recommend Sydney Padua's website 2D Goggles, where you'll find the continuing saga of Babbage & Lovelace as 19th century crimefighters. Their current adventure involves Vampire Poets. Read on (the strange numbering is, I assume, intentional):

Vampire Poets, Prologue (in which the shade of a Gothic poet arises to set the scene, and we get examples of real-world bad Victorian poetry featuring the protagonists).
Vampire Poets - Part One! (in which Babbage, collecting statistics on window-smashing, encounters a mysterious young woman high on maddening draughts of Hippocrene; she later disappears, and her sisters - she is in fact Emily Brontë - enlist Babbage's help in finding her).
Vampire Poets Part the Third (in which Babbage introduces the sisters to Lovelace, whose hereditary temperament has acquainted her with the dangers of poetry. We see a spot of Byronic/Holmesian target practice, and get no explanation from Babbage as to why he thought he would have been a poet if he had been blind).

Here's the index to all the stories. And there's a great list of primary documents.

- Ray

Voyage into the Deep

Also from Salisbury, a very nice find in a charity shop: a 75p hardback copy of Voyage into the Deep, a graphic novel written by François Rivière and illustrated by Serge Micheli (originally published in French in 2003 as Voyage sous les eaux).

The name derives from Jules Verne's working title for his 1870 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and the book is an SF/fantasy exploration of the creation of the novel. It begins in 1866 in the seaport of Le Crotoy, where a mysterious boy - Verne calls him 'Bert' - gives the author a cryptic letter and bottle of green-glowing water "with electric properties". Inspired, Verne begins to write, and the book tells interwoven narratives of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Verne's own adventures; these include acquaintance with an Indian self-styled Princess, Mikah, who is searching for her father; an artist called Daniel Wragg, whose architectural design for his London 'Sarcophagus Club' becomes reflected in Verne's concept for the interior of Captain Nemo's Nautilus; and a Nosferatu-like Margate medium called Robert Lee, whose seance makes direct contact between Verne and Nemo.

Rivière explains in the afterward that the story sprang from his personal fascination with Verne and the character of Captain Nemo, and the book is rich in internal allusions to Victoriana, Verne's life, and his works. Mikah strongly recalls Princess Aouda in Around the World in Eighty Days, and there's reference to Verne's repeated legal issues over plagiarism (both accused of doing it, and being plagiarised from - see Jules Verne: journeys in writing, Timothy A. Unwin, 2005 and Twenty thousand leagues under the seas, Jules Verne, trans. William Butcher, 1998). "Daniel Wragg" is fictitious, but his Sarcophagus Club appears to allude to the architecturally eclectic club of that name in Thackeray's Book of Snobs. (I did spot one anachronism here - Verne likens it to Luna Park, an amusement park near Porte Maillot, Paris, but this didn't exist until two years after Verne's death).

Any graphic novel exploring the mythos of Captain Nemo is bound to fall under the shadow of Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; and Rivière's story, while interesting and evocative, is not as tightly plotted, leaving far more loose ends. Who is 'Bert', and why does he closely resemble Verne's wife? Is Mikah Nemo's daughter? What is the vicious aquatic homunculus that makes several unexplained appearances? Is the whole adventure Verne's fabulation in a fever? Some of these questions are probably answered in the second volume, Voyage sous les eaux: L’île mystérieuse, but Voyage into the Deep is nevertheless more than adequately accessible as a standalone work. It's beautifully-drawn, and thought-provoking: a good 75p's worth.

The Wikipedia article on Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is worth reading for its account of the personal and bibliographic issues. These include Verne's problematic relationship with his publisher, Hetzel, that necessitated repeated changes in Nemo's back-story to steer clear of political hot potatoes; and the mangling of the book by the 1873 translator, Lewis Mercier. The Mercier translation is online at Project Gutenberg (E-Text No. 164) as are restored versions: the public domain Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by FP Walter, and (as far as I tell can tell, authorised) a PDF version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas translated by William Butcher. The last is especially worth reading for its extensive critical introduction.

- Ray

HG Bell: the first cyborged leg?

Further to The Steam Arm: the paper ‘The Steam Arm’: Proto-Steampunk Themes in a Victorian Popular Song (Kirstie Blair, Neo-Victorian Studies, 3:1, 2010, pp196-207) mentions a parallel broadsheet to the 1834 one of the rogue cyborg arm: the rogue cyborg leg in The Cork Leg.

The Cork Leg appears in William Evans Burton's 1837 Burton's Comic Songster (pp12-13) credited as "Written by Mr. Hudson, expressly for Mr. Burton". Its first US publication appears to be a broadsheet by Hudson, The cork leg,and Oyster maid (see Yale University Library Catalogue) published in Boston in 1832.  There were also British versions circulating, uncredited, around the same time: the Bodleian Harding collection's Harding B 11(3925) manuscript has one published by a J Catnach, London, between 1813 and 1838.

In a story somewhere between The Red Shoes and The Wrong Trousers, it tells of:

... Mynheer Von Flam,
Who every morning said "I am
The richest merchant in Rotterdam."

who has his leg amputated after breaking it, and replaced with an artificial one:

An artist in Rotterdam, it should seem,
Had made cork legs his study and theme,
Each joint was as strong as an iron beam,
And the springs were a compound of clock-work and
steam.

The leg, however, goes Horribly Wrong.

He walk'd through each square, and he pass'd each shop,
Of speed he went at the utmost top,
He went with a bounce, and a jump, and a hop,
When he found his leg he could not stop.

Horror and grief were in his face,
The neighbours thought he was running a race,
He clung to a lamp-post to stop his pace,
But the leg kept on nor gave up the chace.

And finally...

He walk'd of days and nights a score,
Of Europe soon he made the tour,
He died, and though he was no more,
His leg kept on the same as before.

The leg-maker grumbles and loudly swears,
That of his bill he'll increase the amount,
But for all this the leg never cares,
But still keeps up a running account.

I've told my story fair and free,
Of the funniest man I ever did see,
He never was buried, though dead he be,
And I am now singing his L E G.

Googling "steam leg" finds a number of contemporary references to the song. However, it also finds something different: this allusion by Thomas De Quincey to a different and earlier work.

... thence doubling back upon London, like the steam leg in Mr H. G. Bell's admirable story.
- page 285, De Quincey's Works, 1853

HG Bell was the Scottish lawyer, poet and historian Henry Glassford Bell (1803–1874), and the reference tracks to his 1832 anthology My Old Portfolio; or Tales and Sketches and the story "The marvellous history of Mynheer von Wodenblock" (pp83-94). First published in the Edinburgh Literary Journal, 47 (1829), this erudite and literate story tells how a wealthy Rotterdam merchant, Wodenblock, is fitted with a complex prosthetic cork leg by the instrument-maker Turningvort.  Its power source isn't explained - it's described as containing "wheels within wheels" and "springs acting upon springs". However, it proves unstoppable, with horrific outcome.

Leyden is more than twenty miles from Rotterdam, but the sun had not yet set, when the Misses Backsneider, who were sitting at their parlour window, immediately opposite the "Golden Lion," drinking tea, and nodding to their friends as they passed, saw some one coming at furious speed along the street. His face was pale as ashes, and he gasped fearfully for breath; but, without turning either to the right or the left, he hurried by at the same rapid state, and was out of sight almost before they had time to exclaim, " Good gracious ! was not that Mynheer Von Wodenblock, the rich merchant of Rotterdam.

Next day was Sunday. The inhabitants of Haarlem were all going to church, in their best attire, to say their prayers, and hear their great organ, when a being rushed across the market-place like an animated corpse, —white, blue, cold, and speechless, his eyes fixed, bis lips livid, his teeth set, and his hands clenched. Every one cleared away for it in silent horror; and there was not a person in Haarlem, who did not believe it a dead body endowed with the power of motion.

On it went through village and town, towards the great wilds and forests of Germany. Weeks, months years, past on, but at intervals the horrible shape was seen, and still continues to be seen, in various parts of the north of Europe. The clothes however, which he who was once Mynheer Von Wodenblock used to wear, have all mouldered away ; the flesh, too, has fallen from his bones and he is now a skeleton—a skeleton in all but the cork leg, which still, in its original rotundity and size, continues attached to the spectral form, a perpetuum mobile, dragging the wearied bones for ever and for ever over the earth!

May all good saints protect us from broken legs! and may there never again appear a mechanician like Turningvort to supply us with cork substitutes of so awful and mysterious a power!

Given the uncertainty of chronology of British publication, it's unclear if the The Cork Leg is a rehash by Hudson of Bell's 1829 story, or if Bell wrote up the broadsheet as a story; either way, the unfortunate Mynheer von Wodenblock definitely pre-dates the 1834-35 The Steam Arm as an example of a cyborg in fiction.

Henry Glassford Bell looks worth reading. My Old Portfolio; or Tales and SketchesThe marvellous history of Mynheer von Wodenblock, they include The dead daughter (highly reminiscent of Poe's Ligeia with its tale of a family's new daughter who grows up identical to the one who died); The living mummy, and the Leyden professor (about a professor who finds a skinny merchant to be a suitable candidate as a mummy for his museum); The Wreck of a World, a Day-Dream (a vivid apocalyptic fantasy); A Tale of the Sea (about a passenger stranded aboard a drifting ship after waking to find the whole crew has decamped); and Dicky Cross, the idiot of Exeter (in which a young woman, taking a short cut through Exeter Cathedral, finds herself locked in with a murderous idiot).

- Ray

The Steam Arm

Via the SF weblog io9.com: Jesse Nevins writes about The First Cyborg Horror Story: "The Steam Arm" Ballad of 1834-35.  It tells of a Waterloo veteran who lost an arm and has it replaced with a steam one, which proves uncontrollable.

"The Steam Arm" features the (arguably) first cyborg in popular fiction and the (arguably) first use of the possessed-limb motif which would become common in 20th century horror fiction and film. More importantly, it's an early work of science fiction horror from a time in which horror fiction was still separating itself from its Gothic roots. The contemporary setting and concerns of "The Steam Arm" are a very great distance from the Gothic setting and tropes of much 1830s horror fiction, and its science fictional content makes it possibly unique.

Having seen Boilerplate: History of a Victorian Era Robot, I mildly suspected a hoax. But no: you can confirm for yourself its existence in contemporary sources such as the 1836 Every Body's Album (page 172). There's a scholarly paper by Kirstie Blair, ‘The Steam Arm’: Proto-Steampunk Themes in a Victorian Popular Song, in the very interesting online journal Neo-Victorian Studies ("a peer-reviewed, inter-disciplinary eJournal dedicated to the exploration of the contemporary fascination with re-imagining the nineteenth century and its varied literary, artistic, socio-political and historical contexts in both British and international frameworks").

The Steam Arm's unruly behaviour strongly reminds me of the similar scenario in Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero, where the hero Bill, having lost his arm in battle, gets a new one (of the wrong colour and handedness) grafted from his dead comrade Tembo.

The sergeant stared at Bill's mismatched hands, his eyes flickering back and forth quickly from one to the other. "Where did you get that hand, trooper? Speak up! I know that hand."

"It belonged to a buddy of mine, and I have the arm that goes with it too."

Anxious to get onto any subject other than his military crimes, Bill held the hand out for the sergeant to look at. But he was horrified when the fingers tensed into a rockhard fist, the muscles bunched on his arm and the fist flew forward to catch the first sergeant square on the jaw and knocked him backward off his chair ass over applecart. "Sergeant!" Bill screamed, and grabbed the rebellious hand with his other and forced it, not without a struggle, back to his side.

There is, by the way, a real neurological disorder called alien hand syndrome. Nor, also by the way, are steam-powered prosthetics beyond possibility : see The Register -  US boffins demo steampunk artificial arm - and the Vanderbilt house magazine article, which has video footage of the scary steam-spitting prototype of this arm (it would suit Mean Machine Angel) powered by the catalysed decomposition of hydrogen peroxide.

Addendum: the 1913 Reminiscences of Henry Clay Barnabee; being an attempt to account for his life, with some excuses for his professional career (Internet Archive ID reminiscencesofh00barniala) contains an embellished version of The Steam Arm that emphasises the cyborg aspect of the story and ends with the arm killing its owner.

The Patent Arm

There was a man in sixty-four
Who hung a shingle at his door :
"Ye who would patent arms secure,
Come buy, come buy, beg alms no more."
Ri tu, di nu, Ri tu, di ni nu,
Ri tu, di nu, ri na.

It was an arm of curious twist
Muscles to work, and supple wrist,
A bona-fide five-fingered fist
No foe when doubled could resist.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

Inside this arm of rare design
Was hid a dollar steam engine,
Which speed and safety both combine,
And got red hot on spirits of wine.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

Into his shop there came one day
A chap whose arm was shot away;
Who looked it, o'er, then cried "Hooray!
With your patent arm I'll march away."
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

His aid the tickled genius lent,
To the soldier' stump 'twas quickly bent;
A valve was ope'd by way of vent,
A screw top turned, and away it went.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

"Aha, she goes!" cried the patentee,
"A finer arm you ne'er did see;
Such a cure deserves a noble fee,
Five hundred in gold pay unto me."
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

Said not a word the soldier chap,
The genius got from his arm a rap
Which came so like a thunder clap,
What could he do but quickly "drap"?
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

Out of the house the soldier flew,
Seeking in vain to turn the screw
And let off steam, which stronger grew,
And sent the arm in a circle new.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

The people scooted from the street,
The horses fled in wild retreat;
A big policeman came to meet
The arm he caught, and changed his beat.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

Then came a squad on capture bent,
Over his head a noose was sent,
Fast pinioned to a cell he went,
To let off steam, perhaps repent.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

Once in the cell, they set him free,
Up came the arm, and down went three;
He banged them 'till they couldn't see,
Beat down the walls and fled in glee.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

He hurried home, 'twas getting late,
His loving spouse stood at the gate;
To his arms she sprang with joy elate,
His arm sprang too, and broke her pate.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

He turned the screw; with an awful whack
Round came the arm, on another tack,
And flew in his face, till alas! alack!
It laid him out flat on his back.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

A crowner's jury quickly roped,
The fallen soldier's boiler ope'd,
And when they found the steam had sloped,
Decided he was telescoped.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

And from that time the rumor ran
A skeleton to walk began;
Who threw out his arm with a lengthy span,
'Twas the ghost of the patent arm-y man.
Ri tu, di nu, etc.

Addendum 2: This topic vaguely reminded me of something, and I just recalled what: one of the nastier cyborgs in SF, Prince Red, who is the antagonist in Samuel R Delany's excellent Nova. Apart from being a "spoilt psychopath", Prince is particular embittered by lacking an arm, which doesn't permit him to have a full set of the neural sockets that are ubiquitous in the future world Delany depicts. As the novel proceeds, he has a series of more and more dangerous prosthetic arms (one of which scars the hero in a fight) until he turns up uninvited at a party and threatens the guests.

At the sand-pool he stopped, stooped between the twins, scooped his false hand into the sand, and made a fist. "Ahhhh ..." His breath, even with parted lips, hissed. He stood now, opened his fingers.

Dull glass fell smoking to the rug. Idas pulled his feet back sharply. Lynceos just blinked faster.
...
"Consider it a demonstration of my love of strength and beauty. Do you see?" He kicked the shards of hot glass across the rug. “Bah! Too many impurities to rival Murano. I came here—"
...
By the great window, Ruby picked up the ugly lumps of glass. She examined them, seeming unconscious of the conversation. But Prince held out his hand. Immediately, she placed them on his palm. She was following their words closely.

"I wonder," Prince said, looking at the fragments, "if this will work." His fingers closed. "Do you insist on reopening this feud between us?"
...
Prince’s fist began to quiver. His hand opened. Bright crystals were shot with internal blue light. "Heptodyne quartz. Are you familiar with it? Mild pressure on impure glass will often produce—I say ‘mild.’ That’s a geologically relative term, of course."

How such an arm could be powered isn't explained, but I assume it's by the superheavy nucleotide "Illyrion" that powers other hardware in Nova

Addendum 2, Feb 13th 2012. From the Daily Mail: Hands up who wants one? Fan proves you really can 'make anything' with Lego after creating prosthetic arm and hand.

- Ray

Bartitsu documentary

A while back I mentioned Bartitsu, the English martial art invented around 1898 by Edward William Barton-Wright and immortalised in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories under the misnomer "Baritsu".

Since then, Bartitsu has undergone a flourishing revival via the historical research of the Bartitsu Society, helped along by publicity for the 2009 Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes (which reenvisioned Holmes as an action hero) and a deal of synergy with the neo-Victorian steampunk movement. In connection with this, Tony Wolf of the Bartitsu Society just sent me news that:

The independent documentary, "Bartitsu: The Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes", is now available on DVD.

At the end of the Victorian era, E.W. Barton-Wright founded Bartitsu as a pioneering "mixed martial art" combining jiujitsu, kickboxing and self defence with a walking stick. It was also the means by which Sherlock Holmes was said to have defeated his arch-nemesis, the evil Professor Moriarty, in their famous battle at Reichenbach Waterfall.

The documentary was shot on location in Italy, Switzerland, England and the USA. Through numerous interviews, animations, re-enactment sequences, rare archival film footage and historical images, it explores the history, rediscovery and modern revival of Bartitsu.

There's a preview trailer, gallery and other associated material at Freelance Academy Press. Particularly check out the article Bartitsu: the "Mixed Martial Art" of Sherlock Holmes, An Interview with Tony Wolf.

I loved one comment at the end, that really sums up the fascination of research: how apparently dusty topics can so easily take you into new experience and acquaintances.

Q: Considering all you have told me, if there is any one "take away" message you want to impart to viewers of the film, what would it be?

That the most obscure and unlikely events can reverberate though history in very strange, interesting and even valuable ways. I mean, if not for Barton-Wright, I'd never have found myself climbing up to Reichenbach Waterfall with an Israeli opera director ...

- Ray

Dr Church's steam coach: 1830s vapourware

image from print in Globe Hotel, Topsham

Having touched on the topic of road trains in the Pavane post a couple of years back, I've kept meaning to check out the background of the excellently steampunk vehicle, Dr Church's London and Birmingham Steam Coach, depicted in the above print. The image proves to be quite widespread; see, for instance, the Science and Society Picture Library page - Picture Reference: 10420391 - whose caption says:

Engraving by Josiah Allen after John Cooke showing the steam carriage designed and built by Dr Church of Birmingham in 1833. The carriage operated on a daily basis between Birmingham and London, at an average speed of 14 miles per hour. It had an unusual design, with three solid wheels, and could carry 44 passengers, 22 inside the carriage and 22 outside. Steam-powered coaches operated between various English towns between 1820 and 1840. The increased popularity of the rapidly expanding railway network, as well as opposition from operators of horse-drawn coaches, who physically blocked roads and persuaded the government to impose crippling tolls, was largely responsible for driving the steam coaches out of business.

The Science and Society Picture Library has another nice image -Image Ref. 10420069 - showing the machine in profile.

However, looking at more contemporary sources, it appears that Dr Church's coach was never a going concern. The couple of decades after 1820 were indeed a boom time for steam road travel, and the London and Birmingham Steam Carriage Company (formed in 1832 "with equal parts confidence, conviction and capital" 1) was one of many companies formed or projected to work steam carriages. "Dr Church" was William Church, a Vermont-born American inventor who had already devised an innovative typesetting machine. After moving to Bordesley Green, Birmingham, he took out a number of patents including ones pertaining to steam transportation (see Birmingham City Archives). Even at the start, there were doubts: in June 1832 a Mr "JHB" wrote to Mechanics' Magazine ...

Allow me, through the medium of your useful Journal, to ask the projectors of the " Birmingham Steam Carriage Company" ... if they have ever made any trial of their machine, either on a turnpike or other road. I am an inhabitant of Birmingham, and have heard a great deal said of the merits of Dr. Church and his new invented carriage, and what it it capable of doing, hut I canuot find on what road any experiment has ever been made to satisfy the public that it is capable, as alleged, of "taking a weight of fifteen tons fifteen miles an hour," and of "ascending any hills upon the turnpike-roads." ... I think the public should not be entrapped into a delusive scheme before the machine in question has had one public and decisive trial.

... and in November 1833 a "Junius Redivivius" sent to the same magazine a sarcastic but essentially sound critique - The Steam-Carriage Projectors - of the likely accuracy of the print, such as the inadequacy of the steering mechanism and the inaccurate proportions of the passengers to the supposedly eight-foot wheels.

William Fletcher's 1891 History and Development of Steam Locomotion on Common Roads (Internet Archive cu31924022808731) tells what happened next (see pages 104-107): the demo didn't take place until 1835, when it made it three miles down the Coventry Road out of the factory and sustained damage turning. In 1836, a number of publications carried the news (undoubtedly advertorial) that everything was fine:

We have much pleasure in stating that Dr. Church has at length completely and satisfactorily accomplished the construction of a steam-carriage, in every way suited to run on ordinary roads ... We have only space to say further, that the Birmingham and London Steam-carriage Company, with whom the Doctor is connected in this invention, are perfectly satisfied with the carriage as now completed ; and though alterations and shght improvements may and will necessarily be adopted in the future exercise of the plans, yet they deem the present carriage to be so fully effective and satisfactory, that they have advertised for a practical engineer to superintend the erection of a sufficient number of these carriages at their works, exactly according with the model produced.

We understand it to be the intention of the company to establish three stations between London and Birmingham for their trains of carriages to halt at, and to supply a fresh locomotive engine at each station, in order that the engines, after running about twenty-six miles, may be severally examined, and such little matters as cleaning, oiling, and adjusting parts attended to: which arrangement will avoid subjecting passengers to the inconvenience of delay, and tend greatly to prevent accidents.

We have only to add, that having witnessed the manner in which this carriage performs its duty on the public road, we have no hesitation in saying that we are now statisfied steam may be safely, and, we believe, economically employed, in connexion .with Dr. Church's improved machinery, as an effective substitute for horses, in the ordinary transit of stage-coach passengers on all the turnpike roads in the kingdom.
- page 386, The London Journal of Arts and Sciences, 1836

But as History and Development of Steam Locomotion on Common Roads says, it never happened. "This scheme was never practically accomplished; the carriages were constantly brought out, and as constantly failed". The proposed details of the London-Birmingham service, however, have trundled on as a factoid until now they've become repeated as fact.

Addendum: Peter Walford kindly supplied confirmation:

Thanks, Ray Girvan, for exposing the "Dr" Church steam carriage "vapourware" (I don't believe he was any kind of doctor). The false story of a daily 14 mph Birmingham – London service has become a ubiquitous internet "meme". The London and Birmingham Steam Carriage Co (LBSC) was projected in 1832 with a capital of £200,000 in £20 shares, allegedly over-subscribed. The chairman was colourful Birmingham financier and pioneer alderman Henry Van Wart (1784-1873) who like Church was American-born. It is alleged that LBSC was established by act of parliament, but it seems rather to have been established by an "indenture or deed of settlement" dated 3 Nov 1834. The company was dissolved by its directors on 11 May 1837, as is announced by aptly-named LBSC secretary W R Kettle in the only London Gazette entry relating directly to LBSC. There is only one other London Gazette entry (13 Jan 1837) that mentions LBSC. This relates to bankrupt "button and military ornament manufacturer, dealer and chapman" Joseph Phipson, whose "shares and interest" in LBSC were part of the assets under consideration.

Thanks very much, Peter. The false story is presumably given weight by the Science Museum endorsement of appearing in the Science and Society Picture Library image caption.

A road not taken

The whole area of steam road transport is an interesting, if geeky, historical "road not taken". The idea was promising, but one fighting against a mess of social, financial and technological factors, of which a major one was the perceived cost of maintaining roads torn up by these big heavy machines. Whether Dr Church's setup was scammy or just ill-planned, there were a number of ventures that worked well, such as that of Gurney and Dance - but they were scuppered by crippling tolls on steam vehicles adopted in 1831. In 1836, a parliamentary bill supported by Gurney ("An act to repeal such portions of all acts as impose prohibitory tolls on steam carriages, and to substitute other tolls on a equitable footing with horse carriages") was passed by the House of Commons, but failed in the House of Lords. The later Locomotive Acts maintained the situation.

There are plenty of good books on the era. A few samplers:

• The abovementioned History and Development of Steam Locomotion on Common Roads.
• Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Colonel Maceroni, Volume II, Francis Maceroni, 1838. Maceroni was a soldier and entrepreneur who poached the idea of a steam carriage while working for Gurney, developed his own carriage with Squire, then fell into financial difficulties and wrote a whiney memoir about being ripped off. See pages 474 onward.
• The Steam-Carriage Boom, 1821-1840: this is Chapter VI of Motor Cars and the Application of Mechanical Power to Road Vehicles, Rhys Jenkins, 1902 (Internet Archive motorcarsandapp00jenkgoog).
  

1. p. 135, Automobile quarterly, Volume 5, Issue 2, 1966, Princeton Institute for Historic Research.
- Ray

Steampunk continues a folk meme

From the Independent on Sunday: A new age of steam (Kate Youde, February 2010 - "Steampunk, a modern mix of Victorian technology and sci-fi, is becoming a major influence in books, fashion and on the big screen"). There seem to have been a lot of media references lately; possibly in connection with the recent exhibition of Steampunk art at Oxford's Museum of the History of Science. The article focuses on Katie MacAlister's Steamed: A Steampunk Romance, which looks rather fun, and mentions groups such as the Victorian Steampunk Society and the UK Steampunk Network website. It's a genre I rather like, as you might guess from the continuing references to Charles Babbage here at JSBlog.

Quite by coincidence, during a meander through YouTube, I ran into Abney Park, a steampunk/gothic band: see their exquisitely-designed website. Their songs are framed by the persona of aerial pirates in a steampunk world (it reminds me of that in Kipling's 1905 story "With The Night Mail", in which the world is governed by a consortium running an airship cargo network). I can't say I like all of Abney Park's work, but it includes a number of very good folk-industrial fusion pieces such as this gripping and hard-edged version of I Am Stretched On Your Grave (Abney Park, BTW, get their name from the overgrown and atmospheric Abney Park, a non-denominational cemetery in London).

Rather like "Patrick Flemming was a Vallient Soldier" - see Immortality through song previously - the song I am Stretched on Your Grave is a highly durable meme, originally an anonymous 17th century Irish poem, Táim sínte ar do thuama (From the Cold Sod That's O'er You in Walsh's 1847 Irish Popular Songs) - thematically similar to The Unquiet Grave. It has since been through a great many covers; the Sinead O'Connor one is well-known, although I like Kate Rusby's straight folk version better.
- Ray