Oh lookie here a pedal powered personal airship!
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

The White Dwarf Flies Again!
 
What's up with the blimp?
It's the White Dwarf, built by Bill Watson and others for the comedian Gallagher in about 1984.  This beautiful and innovative pedal-powered was used by Gallagher to do a Showtime special,  Bryan Allen flew it 58 miles to set an FAI world record for that class airship, Bill and friends took it to Oshkosh, and then they put it behind Bill Watson's parents' house, where it stayed for about 14 years.
Reed Gleason had been enjoying various ways to fly, and noticed that the slower he went, the more fun it was.   He decided he wanted a blimp, and contacted Bill Arras, an acquaintance from serious hang gliding days.  Bill Arras wanted a blimp too, and set about finding out how to build a small blimp, partly by contacting people who'd built small blimps.
Bill Arras found that Bill Watson still had the WD and it was just plain going to waste.   Bill Watson figured Bill Arras, being World Champion  Hot Air Balloonist, would make sure the WD would be used for the forces of good, and Gallagher didn't want to have anything more to do with it, so it was brought to Oregon.  It sat in it's custom trailer while Bill and Reed discovered one reason why there aren't a lot more little blimps:  We couldn't find a place tall enough to fit it.  Eventually, Bill found a hangar with a 25 foot door was found at the Madras Airport, which is a delight, because the airport is large and largely unused.  And the flight service station owner Don Mobley thought the blimp was really great, made room for it in one of his hangars, and generally provided a lot of support.. So Bill and Reed moved the White Dwarf to Madras, OR, assembled and inflated it Sept. 30, 2000, and first flew it Oct.  3.
It actually worked.  It's beautiful construction is less important than the fact that it does what it was supposed to do, a rarity in small airships.  Which is to putter around very slowly with precise control, only in very light winds.
Here's some pictures courtesy of Q, a powered parachute pilot.
Three 50K jpgs.
Bill Arras added a couple of string trimmer 19cc engines with model airplane props.  With a little peddling to help, he average 10 MPH for an hour.  When he peddled hard in addition to full throttle, he got up to about 15 MPH, and then the envelope went unstable, as predicted.  Of course, the consequences of "going unstable" in the WD are a lot less significant than for most aircraft:  the nose wandered a bit and he slowed down.
Here's some pictures courtesy of Richard Tetz.  Richard Tetz himself, the engine setup, and Bill again exploring Willow Creek canyon.
 Three 200K jpgs
More pictures by Richard Tetz:   his photo page.

From Engineering Branch - 19th Century - Engineering and the Engineering Branch. Admiralty Circulars and Memoranda &c.

Circular No. 263

Admiralty, August 26th, 1856

My Lords desire to call the attention of all Officers in command Her Majesty's Ships to Circular, No 177, as well as to the Orders which have been given from time to time respecting the expenditure of Coals, and to impress upon them the necessity that exists of working their ships without the aid of steam, when the duty required can and ought to be performed under sail alone - not only on the score of economy, but for the important purpose of ensuring the efficiency of screw ships as sailing ships.

My Lords are therefore pleased to direct that in future the use of steam power shall not be resorted to when the service on which a vessel is employed can be satisfactorily performed without it; and that their Lordships may know whether this order has been duly observed, all Commanding Officers are, whenever steam is raised, to cause the same to be noted in the Log Book, together with their reasons for so doing, stating whether it be the emergency of the occasion, the necessity of performing the service with the utmost despatch, or other cause which, in their opinion, may justify their having recourse to steam power.

By Command of their Lordships,

R OSBORNE

To all Commanders-in-Chief, Captains, &c

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Didn't get to see this myself till now.
It is the whole ceremony, all 2 and half hours of it, but there is lots of Steampunk-like stuff there.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
Kevin/Max

Check out the rest of the details of this fascinating man at the original:
The Oatmeal: Nikola Tesla

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

In 1902 Russia sent the cruiser Askold, the only five funneled warship in the world, to the Persian Gulf; the Persians were considerably impressed.
Britain ordered HMS Amphitrite to proceed to Muskat in response. However as you can see below, Amphitrite had only four funnels, so the captain had two more made of wood and canvas with smoke and steam piped into them.
Thus is the honour and prestige of Empire maintained.



Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water icedKJ

Each of the sections of this machine has a series of steps.
For example, the absinthe pouring section needs to be able to do the following:

• Position the glass (This could be manual).
• Measure the "dose" from the Absinthe bottle.
• Add the dose to the glass, directly or via a separate measure.
• Reset the measure for the next dose.
• Position the glass for the water/sugar step.

Within these steps there are paths and motions that need to be coordinated. In a typical mechanism design one would want to minimize the motions for efficiency. In our case we want the system to not only work but be SEEN to be working so some superfluous motions are allowed, and even encouraged.

Personally I like the idea of actually tipping the bottle to pour the dose for visual purposes although that does complicate the control of the pour.

Anybody have any ideas on how one could control the pour?

Step one above as noted could be manual of course, however the ability to load the glasses from a sort of magazine could allow the creation of multiple glasses as a sort of "Green Faerie" assembly line.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Click here to see the other Absinthium posts.

This massive list of URLs, compiled by Jacob Mark at Steampunk Is... , has some great information and can really help you to pass all those unused hours profitably.  His site also has lots of good info, papers, reviews as well as this great list of links.
Highly recommended site so check it out.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ


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Here are the first few links from the list, to give you a flavour for what Jacob has compiled:
http://brassgoggles.c...
http://www.onlineclas...
http://www.steampunkt...
http://hickory.palni....
http://airshipambassa...
http://www.thedailybe...
http://www.tor.com/fe...
http://www.tor.com/fe..
http://www.tor.com/fe...
http://www.slantmagaz...
http://www.sfgate.com...
http://thevss.yolasit...
http://thevss.yolasit...
http://www.jaborwhalk...