string can phone

A gentleman walks, or a gentleman rides. A velocipede is hardly a device for a gentleman; but we are not quite sure how to classify the Hudspith Steam Bicycle:

It all began in 1972 when I first had the notion of making a steam bike, thus combining my interest in cycles and motor cycles with my fascination and love of steam. I reallsed that in order to be able to see the water level, the boiler and engine would have to go in front of the rider. I experimented using a pannier bag loaded with four house-bricks hung from the side of a rack, mounted over the front wheel of a bicycle. Finding that I could still ride OK, providing the load was rigidly fixed, I desigued a tall, narrow boiler, to keep the centre of gravity as close in to the wheel as possible. The next few years were spent obtaining the materials and means of making the boiler and it took me until 1989 to complete it in its initial form. It is a semi-flash type, having a lower section of concentric spiral water tubes fed by a central downcomer, surmounted by a fire-tube header which has 24 × 3/8″ flues in a 4″ diameter, copper cylindrical shell. The whole assembly is silver soldered throughout, and contains less than 1 litre of water in total. The boiler is fired from below by a pressure-fed paraffin burner of the Optimus type.[….]