10 Historical Facts You Should Know (But Probably Don’t)

2. Historically, Vibrators Are One Of The Best Selling Household Appliances

Vibrators in a historical context seem like a very modern invention and in terms of human history generally, they are but in terms of the history of electrical appliances, they were actually one of the first. Vibrators had a bizarre history from the very beginning due largely due to Victorians and their attitudes, of course. It wouldn’t be fair though to pick on Victorian Society, in the past, society has always been unfair towards women in most cultures and many have held bizarre ideas over the years including the concept of ‘hysteria’.

Hysteria is a word that is largely applied to women who are going through a difficult time which is making them emotional, unwell or generally just agitated. In this context, what ‘doctors’ meant by hysteria was that a woman was horny and to solve the problem many doctors ‘manually massaged the woman to get her relief and cure her hysteria’, the problem with this being that it took ages a lot of the time and one or both of the parties weren’t too keen on it.

From this predicament came many inventions which of course was the Victorian way, these included steam-powered contraptions and well as hand-cranked tools but towards the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century some began to experiment with electrically powered apparatus. The result of this was the vibrator which soon became a necessary household appliance and not only was in one of the first popular appliances, it was also one of the most popular.

As a product, it came (teehee) before even the modern kettle and it’s often cited as one of the five most popular electrical goods to have in the home.