Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Steam Car for Sale

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This week RM Auctions will sell what it calls the oldest known automobile. The company expects the car to sell for at least $2,000,000. From the RM Auction site:

When the young Comte de Dion stopped at the Giroux toy shop on Paris’s Boulevard des Italiens in December 1881, he was looking for toys to give as prizes at a ball he was planning. But he was intrigued by the quality of the workmanship of a model steam engine and asked who had built it.

Directed to the workshop out back, he found Georges Bouton and Charles-Armand Trepardoux. They were earning a measly seven francs a day building model boats and steam engines and scientific instruments. De Dion promptly offered them 10 francs a day and asked them to build a full-size engine, such as might power a carriage. So, in much the same way as the aristocratic Charles Rolls engaged engineer Henry Royce some 20 years later, a multi-class partnership was formed between a wealthy entrepreneur and working class craftsmen.

A new generation powered by steam and DIY online

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Chris and J.D. Matonti and their mom Julia Coppola have been coming to Comic Con the better part of a decade with their "transmedia property" New-Gen. When I first encountered them a few years back, their super hero story was a pastiche of teens, nanobots and Egyptian mythology crudely illustrated with their own drawings. On day four of Comic-Con, I finally encounter their booth while touring across the exhibit floor and am shocked by the professional gloss and intense color of the latest issues of New-Gen. They have animated videos running on the table; Mark Hamil (Luke Skywalker himself) is voicing the character of Gabriel. They even have a theme song!