If synth rock was meant to go hand-in-hand with fantastic steampunk universes (and we really can't see why it wasn't), instruments would look something like the thing you see here. This is the Parker Steam Synthesizer, a steam-powered music synth that runs on water and some coal. Designer Lorin Edwin Parker controls steam pressure with a ball valve which activates a dynamo. The dynamo is a magnet motor attached to a flywheel that creates an alternating magnetic field which is then turned into electricity by an inductive pickup. That pickup is finally plugged into an amp and you have some trippy electro from a device that could have been around years ago. He says it will run for about 20 minutes on one tank of water, which, in our estimation, is just long enough for Bjork to hear it and add to her band's already-insane inventory. By the way, the Read link includes a .mov file so you can see this thing in action.

[Via MusicRadar]

You like Steampunk, do ya? Well, looks like we've got another laptop iteration for you today, this time entitled "A Clockwork Laptop." Yeah, it's got a bunch of brass and copper fittings -- plus some gothic looking legs -- and an overall retro fantasy style that some people like and others may hate. Make sure to check out the hundred or so cogs inside a glass screen on the back of the real screen. To turn it on you even have to turn a rusty key embedded inside the thumb rest: although you'll still be booting into an anachronistic Ubuntu install if you do so. Check out s'more pics at the link below, and know that you'll never be arsed to make anything even half as impressive. Also, anyone getting a strange craving for a glass of milk after seeing this?

[Via UberReview]

You'd think that a 13-foot / 2 ton, cast iron Scopedog mecha wouldn't require the services of a knee-pad wearin' festival waif, but there you have it. Built by Kogoro Kurata -- the celebrity blacksmith behind the Steampunk laptop -- this 1:1 scale robot was locked and ready for action at Japan's Character and Hobby Collection 2007 show held over the weekend. Seriously though, how tough could the mech be if he's held at bay by some chinsey chain-link?

[Via Impress]

The antique-minded modder over at Steampunk Workshop had it right: what good is a brass-clad mouse and keyboard with a 21st century monitor destroying the mojo? Fret not, as a Dell 1907FP was torn apart, blasted with gold Krylon, and decorated to the hilt with flashy pieces that your great (great) grandmother would surely love. Best of all, this here creator went above the call of duty by dressing up the monitor with gilded triggers to depress the monitor adjustment buttons underneath the panel. Trust us, you need to see this one to appreciate the passion behind it, so feel free to visit the read link for a plethora of photographs and even a few vids.

[Via Digg]

Getting updates on the weather and current time is no problem for modern day coffee machines, but Benjamin Brown's project aims to blend the hottest worldwide news into a multicultural cup of joe. Rather than taking time to find out what's going on in the world around you with your eyes, the News Brews hopes to shovel the latest RSS feeds into your brain via your taste buds. The steampunk-inspired device "connects to internet news feeds and parses them to determine the relative frequency at which different coffee growing regions are mentioned," which means that your brew will differ each day depending on how frequently a given country is mentioned. Of course, not everyone will be down with an unexpected coffee suicide of sorts to wake them in the AM, but trying to figure out what your mouth is reading on the drive to work certainly beats running others off the road or illegally texting at stop lights.

[Via TechDigest]

Hopefully that'll be the last time we're forced to write "mouse" three times in a headline, although the quality of these two mouse mods makes it completely worth it. First is the Steampunk mouse, which would look brilliant sitting next to your steampunk laptop and steampunk keyboard. You could even get your steampunk robot to help out with the construction, which took around 10 hours and only cost the creator Jake $5 to make. If you skip to the real -- as opposed to steampunk roleplay -- description you'll see that it's made up of an nameless laptop mouse and a "big jumble of bits and bobs from [Jake's] parts bin", which tends to be the case with most steampunk efforts. We wouldn't be surprised if the next mouse mod, the mouse mouse, was made using material found in a bin either. In this mod, noahw and canida over at instructibles stuffed a real, taxidermy mouse with the parts from a hacked computer travel mouse. Words cannot describe the combination of horror and awe at seeing the electrical guts of a real rodent being splayed for all to see. Now all that's needed is a PC case modded into a burrow and a mousepad with fake droppings.

[Via MAKE; thanks, jiltedcitizen]

Read -- The mouse mouse
Read -- The Steampunk mouse

Just when you thought steampunk robots couldn't get any nerdier, along comes Crabfu -- creator of the steam-powered RC Rover and other magnificent creations -- and totally raises the bar. The R2-S2 (R2 Steam Too) claims to be the predecessor of R2-D2, and while its steam engine makes this guy quite the sluggish one, we're sure he still has that same heart of gold we've come to know in R2-D2. Crabfu built the bot out of an broken Hasbro R2-D2 Interactive Droid, and after gutting the electronics, he hooked up a fancy new pair of steam engines to the existing gears, squeezed in an old Cheddar Boiler and slapped on a few Victorian steampunk details for good measure. Peep the video after the break to see this puppy crawl.

[Via MAKE]

It would be one thing if the Steampunk Workshop had just salvaged an old telegraph machine and hacked it to translate RSS feeds for kicks, but no, these guys went all out and machined by hand what is at the same time one of the best-looking and most useless projects we're ever seen. Still, modding culture doesn't necessarily place the highest value on functionality, and the detailed instructions and videos provided by SW ensure that you can come up with something just as polished. Anyway, this one looks like it's gonna take you awhile -- especially if you don't have your own band saw -- so take a quick peek at the vid after the break and then get on over to the hardware store post haste; and you do manage to build a working replica, don't forget to do the totally meta thing and send us a vid or MP3 of your creation tap tap tapping this very post out in Morse Code.

[Via MAKE:]

There's definitely a good deal of steampunk gear out there, but this little dude can also keep you company -- kinda. Steam Walker, a steam-powered walking robot of Japanese origin, looks as if it walked (at an unbearably slow pace) out from the pages of a romanticized steam-bot storybook, complete with a makeshift exoskeletal hot bod and loud-as-all-hell engine. The site doesn't offer up much info, but we can tell you that Steam Walker operates via a series of components including the head as a boiler / combustion chamber, an engine, steam pipe, gear box, and yes, a funny little water-drawing bucket.

[Via Boing Boing]


Read - Steam Walker
Read - Video of steampunk bot in "action"

Sick of living in the post-industrial present? Long for an alternate universe where steam trumps electricity? Well, unfortunately, while we can't offer you a complete transfer from the land of "the now" into a steampunk universe, we can show you a way to make it feel like Queen Victoria and the era she represented lasted until the ripe old age of 170. Full instructions for how to convert a 1980s era "clicky" IBM keyboard into an input device that would look at home in a movie adaptation of a Jules Verne novel are available on The Steampunk Workshop: just add a steampunk laptop and you're set. Honestly, if there was one keyboard that could give the Optimus 103 a run for its money in a "coolness" face-off, this would be it. Then again, we always were suckers for mixing retro with modern.

[Via Digg]