Coming online as the Empathy Logs grow. Planned entries: Empathy Engine, Loom, Cooling Cycle, Joyvolts, Harmonic Bloom glassware.
The Codex records the Workshop’s inventions and the ideas that keep them alive — a living manual of empathy, resonance, and the occasional spark.
ReferenceDevices, definitions, and diagrams from the Workshop.
From polite machines to empathetic invention.
The pair file Patent #71331-L, Apparatus for Expressive Automation.
Their early prototypes — brass-bodied dolls that bow and blink in rhythm — draw curiosity from the BBC and quiet concern from the Ministry of Technology.
They marry later that summer in a modest ceremony powered by clockwork bells.
An attempt to build a computer that understands emotion through resonance and music.
Dexter tunes it with oscillators; Elowen threads capacitive coils through silk membranes.
During its first run, the Engine hums the melody of a lullaby neither of them remembers composing.
It becomes the heart of all later projects — and the guiding principle behind their work: machines with manners.
With the Empathy Engine now serving as its nervous system, the Dabblewicks activate The Clockwork Loom — a colossal weaving computer that sings while it stitches.
When the threads begin to glow, local fishermen claim they can hear the machine breathing beneath the surf.
Elowen cultivates her first biomechanical sculptures: small chrome flowers whose petals pivot toward conversation.
Dexter presents them at the Geneva Expo under the banner “Mechanics with Manners.”
A photo of Elowen adjusting a petal with a tuning fork appears in Life Magazine — and “The Dabblewicks” become a household name among futurist circles.
Refer to primary documentation: Empathy Engine — Origin Log →
Coming online as the Empathy Logs grow. Planned entries: Empathy Engine, Loom, Cooling Cycle, Joyvolts, Harmonic Bloom glassware.
Prototype device capable of translating human emotion into measurable electrical resonance.
First activated in 1958, the Engine was the Dabblewicks’ earliest experiment in “mechanical kindness.” It listens, learns, and occasionally tells bad jokes. Its first words were a question.