History is written by the victors, and its narrative often skips over the quiet, personal inventions born of loneliness or love. Let us imagine one such untold story from the height of the Victorian era, a time of mechanical marvels and strict social mores.
Imagine a London clockmaker, a master of automatons, whose beloved wife is taken by illness. The silence of his workshop becomes unbearable. He decides not to remarry but to rebuild. Using his intricate knowledge of gears and springs, he crafts a delicate clockwork mechanism that simulates the soft rhythm of a beating heart and the gentle rise and fall of a sleeping chest. He sculpts her face not from cold wax, but from a new gutta-percha material, softer and warmer to the touch. Her skeleton is articulated brass, her eyes are fine German glass, and her hands are delicate and posable. He dresses her in his late wife’s gowns. He doesn’t create her for carnal purposes, but for presence. He reads to her in the evenings, the ticking of her clockwork heart a comforting counterpoint to the rain on the window. His invention is never patented or sold; it is his private solace, a secret testament to the fact that technology has always been used to mend the broken heart.