On This Day in Steampunk History - March 11

The Great Mauna Loa eruption in 1867, after considerable investigation, appears to have been caused by native savant Piu Ka’pau who was attempting to use the volcano’s ground heat to power a steam-cannon battery with the intention of driving off the foreign interests who were maneuvering to take control of the country. Unfortunately the materials used did not withstand the heat levels the piping holes Ka’pau had drilled acheived and the vast size of the reservoir he had constructed wound up dumping itself deep into the side of the volcano’s wall and the resultant steam pressure firced the magma upwards with great force.

Ka’pau died in the eruption and his motives were only reconstructed later from notes and letters found in the possession of others.

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 10

Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent on his own steam-powered medical enhancement. In his continuing efforts to correct the effects of long nights studying in dying firelight, he became only US president to take out patents. His patents on both a combined back-brace & movement enhancer (to counter his bad back) and auto-focus set of eyeglasses to counter his damaged eyesight.

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 9

Due to prototype workplace machines emplaced and successfully demonstrated by Professor von Tiktoffen, the Prussian government authorized a lowered work week for children of only 51 hours. Von Tiktoffen amusingly referred to his machines as "Clanks" due to the sound they made when you hit them with a hammer to get them started.

The lowered work schedule allowed the children to have sufficient leisure time to get a full 5 hours of sleep every night.

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 8

The first steam-powered atomaton of Andrew Jackson was unveiled in Washington D.C. at the official funeral of the deceased President. While the mourners filed passed the coffin, the automoton could be seen apparently scanning the crowd, tipping its hat and occasionally bowing its head.

It wasn't until several years later when the newly-launched Confederate ironclad "Merrimack" sailed into range of the cCapitol when the automaton's hidden purpose was revealed. Moments after the Merrimack was identified, hidden controls converted the automaton into a steam-powered battery that repelled the attack almost by itself.

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 7

Alexander Graham Bell patents the telesonophone, a novel device that combines a lightweight telegraph key attached to a pressurized steam amplification chamber that lay between the key and a speaking horn. By amplifying the sound from the speaking horn, the steam-powered membrane drove the telegraph key at such a rate that the impulses on the receiving end would register as sound waves.

In time this device would be simplified and modulated until it became the telesons of today.

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 6

German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co. patents Aspirin - A.K.A.acetylsalicylic acid, a derivitative of willow bark. Both the checmical work, and the design of the steam devices used to strip the bark will leaving the willow trees alive, were developed by Jewish chists & engineers, while the credit for them were given to supervisors that were of more acceptable 'races' to the German company's shareholders.

There is some evidence that  the pattern used by the harvester mechs was based on the Qabbalistic theories of Rabbi Levi, as taught to John Dee and Aleister Crowley. Some arguments have been made that these patterns more closely resemble the machine language designs of Lady Ada Lovelace, though the harvesters bear little resemblace to Charles Babbage's calculating machines.

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 5

The British Empire officially declares war on Burma, opening the First Burmese War. While the causes are still in dispute, it is the common belief that the war was ultimately sparked by the expansionist Burmese kingdom shaving away at the area between their kingdom’s borders and those of British-controlled India.

The war was finally settled in the Empire’s favor when British steam-powered walking tanks drew up around the Burmese palace and trained their cannons on the windows.

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 4

Abraham Lincoln, the first steam-powered President in American History, was sworn into office. His steam-pipe/exhaust hat was the origin of the phrase, "Blowing Smoke".

While his inauguration speech stressed the need for the country to remain as one, cynics have suggested his real reasoning was that he didn't want to lose the supply of surplus cotton plants that the South had taken to selling as fuel.

Lincoln's term as President ended when the actor John Wilkes Booth shoved 5 pounds of sand down Lincoln's steampipe, thus locking up his gears and causing a fatal steam pressure explosion. Booth leaped from the Presidential block crying, "Sic Temper Tyrannis" - loosely translated as "Thus overheat tyrants."

On This Day in Steampunk History - March 3

Helen Keller met her teacher and soon to be Svengali-like puppeteer, Anne Sullivan (nee Andra Suleiman). Sullivan was the renegade daughter of the exiled Dr. Omar Suleiman, who had attempted to revive Albert, the Prince-Consort to Queen Victoria, after he’d been dead for 10 years. The resulting chaos from this attempt drove him into exile in Germany and caused his daughter, Anne, to change her name and go into hiding in the Americas.

After enough time went by to allow memories to fade, Miss Sullivan (as she was now styled) used her father’s misbegotten skills to enslave Helen Keller and literally re-wired her deaf, dumb and blind charge into a mouthpiece for social change. 

Duping not only local crowds, but heads of state and, eventually, whole countries, Sullivan used Keller as her tool to convince society that science was not mad and that the horrors that people could already roaming the streets and countryside were nothing more than a minor side-effect of “true” progress.

Eventually, it was noticed, that there were always suspicious wires running out from the bottom of Keller’s garments to the tap-board that Miss Sullivan always carried, but not until it was far too late and horrors such as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster had wreaked their savage ways on the unsuspecting populace of the world.