Date: Mon, 24 Jan 94 15:39:00 EST From: Kafka Dreams To: void Subject: shake it shake it shake it baby "Aids That Every Woman Appreciates" (from the 1918 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog; complete with illustrations) Larger Electric Fans Electric Radiator MAJESTIC Electric Radiator Beater Attachment Household Mixer Electric Sewing Machine Motor Home Motor Portable Vibrator Vibrator Attatchments for Home Motor Buffer and Grinder Attachments New Combination Electric Fan and lamp Electric Radiator Round Electric Radiator Churn and Mixer Attachment Fan Attachment (wait... back up a couple...) Portable Vibrator: No. 57P6301 Neat compact vibrator with three applicators, as shown. Very useful and satisfactory for home service. Shipping wt., about 3 1/2 pounds. Price.........................$5.95 Vibrator Attachments for Home motor. Include the special connection, three applicators and handle. Not necessary to buy a complete vibrator is you have the Home Motor. Shipping weight, about 8 ounces. No. 57P6302 Price................................................$1.35 (Hmm...) Excerpted from the Feature Article of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, June 1989 (8:2 3-11): "Socially Camouflaged Technologies: The Case of the Electromechanical Vibrator" Abstract -- The electromechanical vibrator emerged in the 1880s as a medical instrument designed to mechanize massage techniques employed by physicians since antiquity. Among these was vulvar massage to orgasm as a treatment for hysteria in women. The sexual character of the therapy was camouflaged in medical rhetoric which characterized female arousal as a pathological syndrome from which relief was obtained in the ``hysterical paraoxysm.'' Manual massage was fatiguing and slow, however, and water and steam-powered methods capital intensive; when portable vibrators powered by line electricity became available at the turn of the century they quickly became dominant medical massage technology until the appearance of vibrators in erotic films in the 1920s eroded the instrument's social camouflage. [end abstract] I now have a photocopy of this article. It has 3 pages of references. It seems well-researched & highly detailed, although I've only skimmed it thus far... Kinda makes you go... hmmm...