So there I was perusing the sex toys and vibrators at Amazon.com and I was musing about how when I first joined their affiliate program you weren’t supposed to sell via an adult site. Whereas now they have a wide range of dirty, naughty adult products on sale and no questions asked.
Anyway, there it was: a 1930s vintage vibrator from Battle Creek, for sale for $249 via a company called NJ Auctions.
Imagine that.
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Here’s most of the official description:
This is a Vintage 1930’s Battle Creek Medical Massage Vibrator which came out of a physician’s estate and it is in good looking and in good working ondition. It was made by the Battle Creek Equipment Company of Battle Creek, Michigan and it is 115 volts AC-DC, 60 watts and features a rheostat which can be varied from 0 to 100 units. This is a particularly powerful massager which was designed to be used on a daily or continual basis. It features a fine vibration to a heavy pulsating motion which is powerful enough to massage horses (my emphasis). Battle Creek, Michigan was the location of the first vibrator and massage development during the late 1800’s in the U.S.,and based on the style and design this one likely dates back to the 1930’s or earlier.
I don’t know if this vibrator originally was linked with Dr Kellogg’s Battle Creek sanitarium where vigorous exercise, fibre and enemas were used to prevent masturbation. But I kind of hope it was.
I feel kind of tempted to buy it but the shipping would be a killer. Imagine trying to explain it to customs.
It’s now been over 8 years since I wrote an article for Australian Women’s Forum about the history of the vibrator (you’ll find a copy of it at For The Girls). When I read Rachel Maines’ The Technology of Orgasm I was astounded and felt compelled to write about it. It seemed like such an amazing thing, that women would be getting orgasms from doctors to treat “hysteria.” And that doctors invented the vibrator to save time and push through more paying “patients”. Sexuality at the turn of the century was seriously messed up.
Still, it was probably a nice thing to pop by the doctors, get away from the family for a while and be on the receiving end of something powerful enough to massage a horse.
That AWF article led to me appearing in Turn Me On: The History Of The Vibrator. That doco was only supposed to be a student project, but it developed legs and every now and again SBS shows it late at night. It’s very weird when people ring me up and say they saw me talking about vibrators on TV.
You can read more about the history of the vibrator here.
You’ll find more pics of vintage vibrators here. Also check out Good Vibrations vintage vibrator museum page.