Adam The Mechanical Marvel
I have been refraining from putting this artwork up even though I created it last year since it was intended to go in a steampunk book that has only just recently come into print and I didn't want to jump the gun and post before it would be available.
Art under the link
The book is called "1,000 Steampunk Creations: Neo-Victorian Fashion, Gear, and Art" http://www.qbookshop.com/products/193854/9781592536917/1-000-Steampunk-Creations.html
Here we have an old Luminograph of ‘Adam The Mechanical Marvel’ taken at a meeting of the National Automata Society in Manchester where he was unveiled - a quite remarkable automata constructed by Professor Artemis Warner and Doctor Francis Tilby. Adam could grasp objects and communicate through a steam whistle but it’s inventors never quite managed to get him walking properly. As such, while a landmark achievement in science, he unfortunately ended up as a bit of a failure. A scandal broke when it was discovered that his ability to think and act were actually based on Doctor Tilby’s having used the living brain of a paraplegic ex steel worker, Robert Moore, to control the robot. This led to a public falling out between the two inventors over who had revealed this secret. Professor Warner was later found brutally murdered in his home in the sinister city of Darkport and Adam was blamed (though some suspicion also fell on Doctor Tilby). The courts decided that the operation to move Robert Moore’s brain into the automata had irreparably damaged it and he was to all intents completely insane. Adam was consigned to the Darkport Lunatic Asylum and eventually died there from neglect.
The head and torso along with a single arm and this photograph were discovered in a junk shop in 1997 and for a while both were on display in Darkport’s local history museum, but the Darkport Historical Society had it removed after visitors kept on reporting they had seen it move and a cleaner resigned after hearing what they were convinced was the whistle blowing faintly as if it were trying to communicate.
Footnote: The photograph itself is also of some interest, being an experimental colour process invented by Professor Warner.
Some trivia for you - I was creating this during the UK general election run-up and in a fit of madness decided to use two politicians who were battling it out in that election as inspirations for the faces of Adam's proud creators. As always their faces were recreated from fragments of various people. No prizes for working who they are though.