‘Doctor Who’ thing of the day: legendary steampunk Dalek

Is Alex Holden trying to hide the truth by stating that he is the designer/inventor, and the whole construction process started with the purchase of a cheap plastic Dalek bubble-bath bottle?

Such are the questions surrounding this device. If we take Alex Holden’s version of it, he spray-painted the Dalek bottle with nothing but a can of gold Plastikote paint, added wheels, a chimney stack, several cylinders and other extras from a used brass model of Stephenson’s Rocket. On top of that he piled the heads of various miniature rotary wire brushes, and various odds and ends lying around his workshop: a pressure gauge, safety valve, the whistle and other gauges, all held together with hot melt glue, cyanoacrylate glue and screws.

But we musn’t listen to Alex Holden. The Great Crystal Cyberdome Exhibition has the records of what actually happened. Joseph Bazalgette patented this sewer maintenance machine in an effort to modernize the cleaning of London’s sewers. Powered by miasma and driven by modified rat brains -genetically or otherwise, we do not know – it was too willful an invention, and the first fifty produced escaped into the wild unknown of the tubular London underground, forcing Bazalgette abandon his invention and return to using manpower. It is said that to this day you can sometimes hear the sound of brass clicking with steam and rats being crushed. But that’s another story.

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