So – I went on vacation last week, and had a few unexpected encounters with stuff that may inform my own ideas about Steampunk. I downloaded a couple of Cherie Priest’s novels to read on the plane (Boneshaker and Dreadnought), and continued my reading of the works of Jules Verne (Journey to the Center of the Earth complete, most of the way through Around the World in Eighty Days). I’ll have more to say about those if I ever get around to doing some sort of capsule reviews – the literary side of Steampunk is definitely an interest of mine, but I don’t really just want to put up yet another plot summary, nor am I in any danger of replicating the work of The Steampunk Scholar, so my own minor works of literary criticism will have to wait until I’ve figured out an angle…
Anyway. The vacation trip involved stops at several of the Smithsonian Institution’s marvelous museums, and while it’s not entirely unexpected that some of the exhibits covered historical eras that are important wellsprings for Steampunk inspiration (the American Civil War era, the history of flight), I had not actually expected to find an entire exhibit hall in the National Museum of American History devoted to the history of steam engines, water wheels, turbines, and electrical generation plants… So I spent a goodly while ogling the scale models, the full-size examples, and the historical data and contextual signage.
The exhibit suffered a little, in my humble opinion, from a certain amount of disorganization. There were two sections that appeared to be trying for some sort of chronological order, in an attempt to show successive improvements to the technology over time (straight-bladed wheel in flowing river -> sluice to modify water flow onto a wheel -> bucket-shaped blades, undershot for increased power transfer -> turbines which could be fully submerged, for example…), but they weren’t directly related to each other (the second section dealt with steam engines), and in between were a bewildering array of other steam engines, generators, and mechanical devices that made little sense taken out of context – and since I don’t have a background in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, etc., the “obvious benefits” of certain fiddly bits weren’t really all that obvious. Still – a lot of interesting data, and some ideas about how this stuff actually looks when it’s working properly.
At another museum (National Air and Space Museum this time), the Early Flight exhibit got off to a marvelously steamy start with a model of La Minerve, a fanciful 1804 “proposal” for an airship/balloon capable of circumnavigating the globe. I’m not sure that the laws of physics in any possible world would have permitted La Minerve to function, but it’s a marvel of fantasy engineering, and definitely a source of whimsical inspiration for an airship with all the modern conveniences…
