I am always interested in tangential parts of history. I would have loved to get a PhD in history by studying business history. I am fascinated with all aspects of business, and I think that a history of business or even businesses in america would be fascinating and point to the rest of american history in the process (as business interests often overlap with political interests and decision making.)
In the extended entry I copied parts of an article I found in Slate. I copied part of it even though it is probably copywritten because I do not know how to refer people to it after it is moved around in msn's webspace. Slate, please forgive me. Maybe it will help to know that I am publicizing your webzine. The article is credited to Teresa Riordan, and is entitled "For Pleasure: A history of the vibrator"
The use of vulvular massage as a therapy for "hysterical" patients dates back to Hippocrates. During the 19th century, it caught on as a treatment for the rampantly diagnosed afflictions hysteria and neurasthenia. The doctor of Alice James, the sickly sister of the famous Henry and William, probably brought her routinely to "hysterical paroxysm."
The treatment wasn't generally thought of as sexual, but rather as ho-hum therapy. Not surprisingly, it was a cash cow for the medical profession. Women had to return week after week, year after year. But doing it by hand was exhausting, tedious work; some women had to be massaged for an hour before they reached paroxysm.
Thus, entrepreneurial doctors experimented with mechanizing the process. Hydrotherapy—the shooting of water directly at the patient's reproductive region—proved effective and became quite fashionable. It had its drawbacks, though: It was messy, expensive, and not easily portable.
In the 1880s, a British doctor stepped in to invent the first electric vibrator, an industrial-size contraption meant to be a permanent fixture in a doctor's office. It was a major labor-saver, allowing many patients to reach paroxysm in less than 10 minutes.
Paradoxically, while female patients were being massaged to paroxysm week after week, men prone to excessive onanism and unwholesome nocturnal secretions were diagnosed with "spermatorrhea." Torturelike contraptions were contrived to strap and zap them back to normal.
Men fortunate enough to be diagnosed with more amorphous ailments were sometimes treated with vibrator massage. The legendary naturalist John Muir patented his own vibrator for men in 1899.
Around the turn of the century, entrepreneurs began to recognize the huge potential market for hand-held vibrators for home use. Vibrator innovation was in fact a driving force behind the creation of the small electric motor. Hamilton Beach of Racine, Wis., patented its first take-home vibrator in 1902, making the vibrator the fifth electrical appliance to be introduced into the home, after the sewing machine and long before the electric iron.
By 1917, there were more vibrators than toasters in American homes. Dozens of patents were issued for new designs between 1900 and 1940. Manufactured long before the era of engineered obsolescence, these machines were built to last. Many vibrators of this vintage still survive; at least a dozen are usually for sale on eBay at any given moment.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, the vibrator became what academics like to call a camouflaged technology. Mail-order catalogs full of household tchotchkes featured beautiful women with long, silky hair loosening their tight shoulder muscles with banana-shaped vibrators. Also popular were vibrators that doubled as nail-buffer kits, hair brushes, backscratchers, and some that were designed as attachments for vacuum cleaners. Most of them were cheesy, battery-operated devices that came in shag-carpet hues: avocado, gold, and burnt orange.
Vibrators came back into the mainstream in the 1990s, thanks not to radical feminists but to the Reagan administration. With the public health threat of AIDS looming, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop mailed out a list of safe-sex options to every household in the land in the late 1980s. Vibrators were on it.
In 1999, Rachel Maines published The Technology of Orgasm, a provocative history of the vibrator that she spent 20 years researching. Maines started out studying needlework but was intrigued to discover that the backs of old sewing magazines were filled with vibrator advertisements. In addition to treating hysteria, these early vibrators were multipurpose: They ostensibly relaxed furrowed foreheads, cured sore throats, and restored plumpness to bony arms. Fearing that her new line of academic inquiry might offend alumni, Clarkson University fired Maines. The Technology of Orgasm has become one of the best-selling histories of technology of all time.
I wonder if Joy has read this, and what she thinks about it.
Posted by: Luke B. at July 7, 2005 09:20 PMI'm thinking that she has not. I have no idea of what she'll think of it when she does read it. What did you think of it?
That's very very interesting. I had no idea that John Muir patented his own vibrator for men. that sorta weirds me out because I've known about Muir since I was 5 because my dad and I used to go on the Muir trails in Northern California and visit Yosemite National Park each year (Muir was the first person documented to have found Yosemite and worked to preserving its beauty).
The history is very interesting though I really thought you were going to talk about something else when I saw business history.
Posted by: JB at July 8, 2005 09:31 AM