Image 1. Poster for 1954 movie "20,000 Leagues under the Sea", considered to be a steampunk progenitor. Notice the diving outfits and the submarine, which both become steampunk icons. Image via Wikipedia.


Image 2. Cover of game "Space: 1889". Note mix of Victorian style and fantastical flying machines, as well as the mythical canals of Mars, a Victorian obsession, visible in the background. Image via Wikipedia.

Image 3. Cover image from first issue of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (1999). The Victorian costumes of the protagonists conceal their respective special powers. Image via fansite pjfarmer.com.


Image 4. Cover image from Matt Fraction's graphic novel Five Fists of Science (2006), in which Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla team up to defeat evil JP Morgan and Thomas Edison. Image via boingboing.


Image 5. Main character of "Steamboy" (2005), Japanese anime feature: the urchin inventor James Ray Steam. Image via Yahoo Movies.


Image 6. The hero of the Japanese feature "Casshern" (2004), sporting a headpiece riveted together in steampunk style. Image via Cyberpunk Review.


Image 7. The "Casshern" landscape—fully mechanized. Image via Cyberpunk Review.


Image 8. Still from "The Mysterious Geographic Adventures of Jasper Morello" (2004). Elaborate airship (note visible gears) bears crew through mysterious airspace. Image from movie's official site, Gothia Gazette, which also features "news" from the Morello universe. Watch this short film on YouTube here.


Image 9. Poster for "City of Lost Children" (France, 1995). The mad inventor siphons children's dreams via an elaborate headpiece. Image via Cornell library website.



Images 10 and 11. Sets from "Wild, Wild West" (1999). The first set is of the train retrofitted with scientific devices that Smith and Kline's characters use to travel throughout the West; the second set is Dr. Loveliss' evil lair. Vaguely, in the center, you can see Dr. Loveliss in his steam-powered wheelchair. Images via the "Wild, Wild West" official site.


Image 12. Still from "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" film (TK year). Image via Entertainment Weekly website.


Image 13. Steam-powered robots constructed by I-Wei Huang. The propane tank on the left heats water for steam. Images via the Internet Craftmanship Museum, which also has more images and details about Huang's robots.


Image 14. The "Neverwas Haul", a steam-powered movable house float built for Burning Man. Images from Neverwas Haul group page on tribe.net.


Image 15. The Steampunk Treehouse in action at Burning Man. Images from the Steam Treehouse website, where details of construction are also outlined.



Images 16 and 17. Interior of the Edison Bar in Los Angeles, which incorporated elements of the former engine and furnace which inhabited the space. Images from eecue.com.


Image 18. Jake von Slatt's steampunk computer modification (the computer still works). Details on how to make this modification can be found at von Slatt's Steampunk Workshop. Image via boston.com.


Image 19. "Steampunk iPod", which reveals tin pictures when cranked. Yours for $500, on etsy.com.


Image 20. The cog-ridden steampunk landscape of "Jasper Morello". Image from movie's official site, Gothia Gazette.

Image 21. Lightswitch that makes the desirable "clack" sound. From the Steampunk Home blog.



Images 22 and 23. Thomas Truax's instruments, the Stringaling and the Hornicator. From Truax's official website.


Image 24. A made-to-order daguerrotype created from a contemporary image. Image from practitioner Jonathan Danforth's website.


Image 25. "City of Lost Children"'s brain-in-a-bubbling-box has a birthday party. Image via SciFiMoviePage.


Image 26. The Steamboy cyborg father embedded in his control center. Image via Cinematic Intelligence Agency.

Image 27. English artist Alex CF's "Inquisitor" eyepiece. Image from Alex CF's blog, The Art of Alex CF.


Image 28. Alex CF's Solid Geometric Anomaly Location Gauntlet. Image from Alex CF's blog, The Art of Alex CF.


Images 29 and 30. Furniture for Sara Brumfield's imaginary Airship Room: balloon armchair by Horchow and gondola daybed by Newport Nautical Decor. By imagining the aesthetic of everyday life on a zeppelin, steampunk neutralizes and thus, ironically, fetishizes danger. Images via The Steampunk Home.

Image 31. Boy's room on an airship, imagined by Melissa Koch. Boys play with robots, miniature zeppelins, and leave a mess, while the clouds fly by outside. Image from deviantart.


Image 32. Zeppelin bracelet, for sale by dirtybirdd on Etsy.


Image 33. Working steampunk-inspired Mac computer by Andrew Leman, modified along the lines of the computers used by office drones in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". Image via bifsniff.


Image 34. "Brazil"'s tinkerer Tuttle, whose outlawed knowledge of heating systems constitutes rebellion. His ability to find his way around in these tangled pipes and ducts is an image of human freedom in the face of smothering bureaucracy. Image via the Universite de Tecnologie, Compiege website (French).






Images 35, 36, 37. Alex CF's vision of the democratization of technology through steampunk, the "Scenes from a Retrofuture Society" series: urchins, girls, and mad backalley scientists all have control. From Alex CF's blog, The Art of Alex CF.

Image 38. The Corliss Engine, on display, towers over its viewers. Image from Marquette University engineering website.




Images 39 and 40. The two-part reveal of the Nautilus in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel. The top image is a sixth of a page; the bottom image is an entire page. The ship is larger than any of the surrounding infrastructure of the port, and represents the intrusion of the future into the present through the presentation of technology of unbelievable visual impact. Image scanned from LXG #1, pp 43-44.


Image 41. The mechanical spider from "Wild, Wild West" towers over the two protagonists. Note the belching black steam in the background and the very-visible elements of construction on the arms. Image from Sci Fi Movie Page (which, by the way, gave the film one and a half stars).


Image 42. Vinyl "steampunk" laptop decal: a skin for a skin, with the false promise of transparency of working elements. Sold by thosmhicks on Etsy for $18. Image from Etsy.