Steam Punk... circa 1861 When It Was Real....

"A trainwreck in maxwell" sent me a link to a neat post over at "truebluesam"'s place where he posting this amazing piece of artwork:




This is a accurate 1/16 scale operating model of the engine which powered the
Civil War Ironclad USS Monitor. It was invented and built by John Ericsson in 1861
and was extremely compact for it's 300 horsepower at that time.
Only one engine was ever built exactly as displayed, and it was retrieved from the ocean floor
by the US Navy in 2001, and resides in the Mariners Museum ,Newport News VA, for conservation work. The model required over 3000 hours to build and all pieces including fittings and fasteners were made from scratch .