"BACK TO THE FUTURE? IN 1868?"
Newark’s Steam Powered Robo-Man These days there’s a popular fashion or “cosplay” fad known a “Steampunk.” Steampunk is based on the idea of futuristic technology existing in the past, usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. But thirty years before H.G. Wells published his sci-fi masterpieces, there was a real life Steampunk walking the streets of Newark, NJ. In January 1868 a futuristic steam powered robot called the Newark Steam Man was patented and built by an eccentric inventor named Zadoc P. Dederick, who hoped he had solved the problem of the horseless carriage. Dederick, a patternmaker by trade, built a man-like figure about seven feet tall with a 6 horse-power steam engine in its belly. Its leg