The first known vibrator was invented in 1869.

History of the vibrator

By: Brian Reisinger

Posted: 11/12/07

Granted, she was with a group of friends and it was just for fun, but sophomore Katie Uhlrich still felt strange entering a sex shop that sold vibrators.

"It was something that a 'good girl' wouldn't do," she said. "It wasn't somewhere that you'd want to be seen."

As it turns out, those buzzing phallic instruments used to be just what the doctor ordered, one researcher says.

Rachel Maines, a visiting scholar at Cornell University in New York, said vibrators date back to the late 1800s, when doctors would use them on female patients to treat "hysteria."

The idea that a woman required such an intrusive massage to relieve a mental condition goes back about 2,500 years, she said.

The first known vibrator was invented in 1869 and was steam powered, Maines said, freeing doctors of the chore of massaging by hand.

By the 1880s an electromechanical model had emerged, and by 1899 there was a battery-powered vibrator for "self treatment at home," she said.

Such treatment, Maines said, was not considered sexual at the time because it wasn't full intercourse.

"The idea of it being sexual was kind of kept hidden," she said. "Most of them thought that it wasn't."

People even viewed the in-home vibrator as they would any other appliance - like, say, a toaster.

"Woman doesn't live by toast alone, right?" Maines said with a laugh.

But when vibrators began to appear in pornography in the 1920s, their medicinal uses didn't seem quite so innocent.

"People said, 'Wait a minute, there is something sexual going on here,'" Maines said.

Needless to say, vibrators fell by the wayside in the medical community, only to resurface in the 1960s as the sexual toy people are more familiar with today.

The idea that the risqué toys of today were once the legitimate medical instruments of yesteryear was a bit surprising to junior Tim Vink.

"I guess I kind of figured it came about recently, and not for those purposes," he said.

Others had heard about the vibrator's medicinal past, but still found it interesting how different the perception of the device used to be.

"(People today) are really focused on the pleasure aspect," said junior Katie Stensen.

Uhlrich said she thinks people should be more willing to talk about things such as vibrators and, more broadly, female sexuality.

Being able to be open about such topics is critical to having healthy relationships, she said.

"In a lot of ways we're still caught up in the Victorian idea," she said. "It's stunning, in this day and age."

Of course, the traditional moral sensibilities of the Victorian age might not have looked down on a woman using a vibrator - as long as she had her prescription.