In 1987 the writer K. W. Jeter, half-joking in a letter to his editor, used the word 'Steampunk' to describe the Victorian-era fantasy sci-fi he and his friends were writing. Three years later The Difference Engine (1990), co-written by William Gibson + Bruce Sterling, pushed the genre into the mainstream — 'What if Charles Babbage really had built a computer in the 19th century?'

Visually it is a hybrid of 'Victorian aesthetics × mechanical imagination': brass, copper, mahogany, leather, glass tubes, gears, clockwork, steam valves, goggles, long gowns, pocket watches. In animation: Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky (1986) and Howl's Moving Castle (2004); in games, Bioshock Infinite (2013); and most powerfully of late, the city of Piltover in Netflix's Arcane (2021–24).

It barely shows up in mainstream product design — too literal, too 'costume.' But it thrives in theme restaurants, escape rooms, luxury fountain-pen brands (Mont Blanc), mechanical watch faces, and a whole shelf of craft-beer labels — when you want to say 'handmade, intricate, worth the price,' this brass-and-machinery language is still unbeatable.