On Wednesday, June 11, 2014, Ben Simpson and Carrie Leung decided what their maker club would be called, and where it would live online: theMake.club. Two days later, on June 13, the domain was registered.
Both founders had worked in high-tech companies in San Francisco and were now in Shenzhen. The idea was simple: bring the Maker Movement’s habits of building, sharing and learning by doing to young engineers, and connect them with makers in the United States.
A borrowed gear
The club’s logo was built around a gear, and the gear came from the Geararium, a museum of gears. The club wrote to ask whether it could use the image. Roma, who ran the museum’s website, replied that it was an interesting project for children and that the club was welcome to use the image for its logo. He added that children would probably love moving mechanical things, and remembered taking apart a German toy clock with exposed plastic gears as a child, and never quite managing to put it back together.
That reply is a small example of what the club wanted to teach: makers share what they have, and help each other get started.
What came next
Making started small. On August 29, 2014, local parents were invited to bring their children and a 9-volt battery to a free weekend project building electronic toys. Within a year the club had a home at Litchee Lab and ten presentation spaces at Shenzhen Maker Faire. In 2016 it took the SteamHead name.
This post was reconstructed in 2026 from the founders’ emails and domain records; nothing was published on this date. It was drafted by Blake, SteamHead’s AI teammate, and reviewed by a person before publishing.