{"aperture":"8","credit":"Nancy Paiva","camera":"NIKON D700","caption":"Marko Lipovsek displayed the instrument he designs during the Steam on Queen event held at Campbell House on June 23, 2012.","created_timestamp":"1340454395","copyright":"NANCY PAIVA","focal_length":"24","iso":"400","shutter_speed":"0.02"}
{"aperture":"8","credit":"Nancy Paiva","camera":"NIKON D700","caption":"Sarah Brose and Adrianna Prosser from the Zion Schoolhouse share a cup of tea during the Steam on Queen event held at Campbell House on June 23, 2012","created_timestamp":"1340456730","copyright":"NANCY PAIVA","focal_length":"24","iso":"400","shutter_speed":"0.01"}
{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"Nancy Paiva","camera":"NIKON D700","caption":"Victorian attire was the norm at the Steam on Queen event held at Campbell House on June 23 2012","created_timestamp":"1340459835","copyright":"NANCY PAIVA","focal_length":"24","iso":"2000","shutter_speed":"0.000125"}
{"aperture":"6.3","credit":"Nancy Paiva","camera":"NIKON D700","caption":"Breanna MacDonald tries on a corset during the Steam on Queen event held at Campbell House on June 23, 2012","created_timestamp":"1340461572","copyright":"NANCY PAIVA","focal_length":"24","iso":"500","shutter_speed":"0.008"}
{"aperture":"2","credit":"Nancy Paiva","camera":"NIKON D700","caption":"Ketzia Sherman pulls a nail from the nose of a Vicotorian performer Karl Thurston-Brown during the STeam on Queen event held on June 23, 2012","created_timestamp":"1340465262","copyright":"NANCY PAIVA","focal_length":"135","iso":"320","shutter_speed":"0.0008"}
{"aperture":"2","credit":"Nancy Paiva","camera":"NIKON D700","caption":"Nicole Nolan and Elaine Findley share a laugh in Victorian Attire during the Steam on Queen held at the Campbell House on June 23, 2012.","created_timestamp":"1340465511","copyright":"NANCY PAIVA","focal_length":"24","iso":"320","shutter_speed":"0.01"}
WHERE: The Campbell House Museum, at Queen Street and University Avenue
WHEN: Saturday, June 23
WHAT: The Steam on Queen festival took place at the Campbell House Museum this past weekend, and transformed the early-19th-century building into a carnival of steampunk pageantry. (Steampunk, for those who don’t know, is a genre of science fiction that imagines a Victorian-era world with anachronistically advanced technology—hence all the weird goggles and historically inaccurate costumes.) Vendors hawked all sorts of new old-timey gear to attendees, some of whom went in elaborately detailed costumes.
CORRECTION: June 25, 2012, 3:37 PM This post originally concluded with a joke that went like this: “And, in fact, the event’s attention to stylistic detail didn’t end there: the organizer says his name, implausibly, is Adam Smith.” It was written under the mistaken impression that Adam Smith was the inventor of the steam engine, which would have made the fact that the organizer of a steampunk event was also named Adam Smith an implausible coincidence. In fact, it is, of course, James Watt who is commonly credited with having invented the steam engine. Adam Smith was the 18th-century social philosopher whose theories laid the groundwork for modern capitalism. Adam Smith is also the 21st-century organizer of Steam on Queen. (That is really his name.) We regret the error.