Beautiful Scientific Illustrations on Retronaut

V0025020 Astronomy: a diagram of various atmospheric effects. Coloure

If you’re not familiar with the website Retronaut  (and you really should be), it’s a collection of all manner of vintage photographs and illustrations spanning millenia. One can easily spend vast amounts of time perusing this site!

The site recently featured a number of beautiful colored engravings on scientific topics by John Philipps Emslie, a Victorian age illustrator.  I find his work beautiful and strangely modern in the methods he uses to impart information. Reproduced above is his Diagram of Meteorology.  Retronaut has a couple of collections of his work.

Infographics of the Natural World

Scientific Diagrams

Enjoy!

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Welcome!

Welcome to the first post on my Airship Flamel Blog.

Why the name Airship Flamel? The Airship Flamel, or more accurately, Her Majesty’s Research Airship Flamel, is the conveyance of one Professor Nicodemus Boffin, Scientist General of what is called by default “The Endeavour”, as no better name could be agreed upon.

And who might this Boffin fellow be? Only the protagonist in my upcoming novel To Rule the Skies, a story of adventure, daring exploits, and Science! I discussed the genesis of this story in a guest blog post I did for T.E. MacArthur’s The Volcano Lady blog.  last November. In short, Professor Nicodemus Boffin is a British scientist tasked by Her Majesty’s Government to increase the scientific knowledge and technical might of the Empire. As it happens, the unique abilities of Boffin and the crew of the Airship Flamel are often utilized for other, more dangerous missions.

I will talk about Professor Boffin much more in the coming months as the book approaches publication. But I don’t expect this blog to be solely about my books (Yes, books (plural). There is one additional book in progress, a prequel to To Rule the Skies, and several more floating around in my head. It’s not a coincidence that the book is subtitled An Airship Flamel Adventure…) I hope this blog will also be a source of useful and enjoyable topics of interest to the readers of my books–science, history, steampunk, history of science, science of history, steampunk science, Victoriana, making…you get the idea.

I am pleased that you have found your way here. I promise many adventures to come.