Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Lord British's Steampunk Home -- Britannia Manor

Lord British, aka Richard Garriot, is one of my hometown's techno-celeb, and game producer extraordinaire. His home, Britannia Manor, is a place of legend (and the location of famous Halloween parties). What a surprise it was, then, when reading through November's Fast Company, to discover an article about Garriot which included pictures of his home.



In front of Garriot is a brass model of the galaxy. The left hand side objects are not very clear -- upon consultation with various family members who know old electronics we think there's a test kit on the bottom shelf and perhaps an old Bang * Olfsen equipment on the middle shelf. On the upper right there's an hourglass and a metronome, on the lower right shelf is a anniversary clock (also known as a 400 day clock) and a collection of old cameras. I can't quite tell what's on the middle right shelf -- perhaps a stereoscopic viewer? A slide carousel? A balance scale?



Glass eyes, and something neat that even my power engineering father-in-law couldn't identify -- it has alligator clips, one of those little rotating turbine type things (you've probably seen glass globes that you set in the sunlight that have the same sort of thing inside).



Ok, so the shrunken head is a bit grotesque for my taste, but the cylinder on the right is a Curta mechanical calculator and the camera on the left is probably a technical field camera. Random chemistry equipment on the upper right, and the glass eyes again in the lower right.

There's some more material on the house online, so I'll try to do another post soon with the best of it.

2 comments:

Dennis S. said...

The middle right shelf does indeed have a back lit steroscopic viewer (Center). on the left seems to be a rotoscope, if I am remebering the name right. You have a strip of images that you set up on the inside, spin it while looking at it either at an angle or through precut slots and it looks like the image moves. A spinning flip book. Looks like there is a lamp mounted on it as well. The far right... I have no idea.

Tinkergirl said...

That thing above the glass eyes is a railway tube - I saw some working at the Museum of Victorian Science. Very impressive - wonder if Lord Brittish ever sets it running.

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/xraytubes/railway.htm

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