Hasta La Gadget!

As long as humans have had genitals, we’ve found artificial ways to stimulate them. But it took the repressed Victorian era to create the vibrator, a device aimed at curing a disease that doesn’t exist.

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, a time where those without honeybears to take out to dinner are probably feeling a little lonely. And you know what happens when people get lonely: they go to town on themselves. According to Pamela Doan of Babeland, one of the biggest sex toy shops around, sales were up 22% overall last February, with Valentine’s Day itself being the highest single retail sales day they ever had. In fact, they were so high that they accounted for 19% of Babeland’s sales for the entire year. That’s a lot of vibrators.

I talked about the earliest vibrators with Dr. Rachel Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm, the definitive history of vibrators and the repressed era that spawned them. I had no problem talking to Dr. Maines about vibrators, but back in the 19th century, talking about masturbation was very taboo. So the first vibrators weren’t marketed as such. Instead, they were sold as medical devices used to treat “hysteria,” hysteria being something that ladies came down with when they hadn’t gotten their rocks off in a while.

According to the 2nd century anatomist Galen, hysteria was caused by the retention of “female semen,” which could get into the blood and corrupt it. So clearly, it had to be periodically let loose.

So doctors took to “curing” hysteric single women who didn’t have a husband to cure them of their ailments the normal way. They would stimulate the vagina until “parosysm” (read: orgasm) was achieved. But their hands got tired so quickly, what with all the vigorous rubbing required. And so the vibrator came into existence.

Vibrators have been around longer than electricity has—the first model came out in 1734 and used a crank like some sort of hedonistic egg beater—but it took electricity to really bring them to the mainstream.

According to Dr. Maines, all vibrators are just inefficient motors. “All motors vibrate. If you make a motor that’s especially sloppy, it’ll vibrate more. That’s the principle behind the vibrator: a very sloppy motor that’s designed to vibrate.” An efficient motor, such as the one that runs your fridge, would make for a seriously crappy vibrator. But the Manipulator, which was essentially an inefficient steam engine with a dildo attached to it, did the job swimmingly.

One of the first mechanical vibrators was the steam-powered Manipulator (pictured up top), invented by Dr. George Taylor in 1869. This monster machine hid its engine in another room with the apparatus sticking through the wall. Terrifying!

Today, vibrators have come a long way. First of all, they don’t require an entire room to run properly. Secondly, they can be purchased for their intended use instead of pretending like they’re curing whatever disease it is that makes women horny. Add onto that the advancements made in plastics and moulding makes them feel less like cold appliances. It’s the golden age of vibrators, everyone!

To make you truly thankful for the era we live in, here’s a selection of some of the weirdest and most uncomfortable-looking vibrators to ever see the light of day, with descriptions courtesy of Dr. Maines. The Manipulator is scary, sure. But then there’s the Electro-Spatteur, which spiced up its vibrations with electric shocks. You can’t make this stuff up.

For more information on the history of sex toys, be sure to check out The Technology of Orgasm by Dr. Rachel P. Maines and Passion and Power, a documentary on the subject.

Days away from the supposed launch of the Apple tablet, we know almost nothing about it. While we can’t say for sure which rumors are true, we can definitely say which, over the past decade, were just plain dumb.

If you think galleries are dumb, too, click here for a single page.

The word “tablet” used to refer to a flat slab for bearing an inscription. Leave it to the tech industry to make it into something far more complicated and confusing.

Scores of products marketed as “tablets” have come and gone, and now — with rumors of imminent tablet computers from Apple, Dell, Microsoft and others — the category seems ripe for a rebound.

“If people can figure out a new device category that consumers will want to buy that isn’t a laptop or a phone, that opens a whole new possibility in markets to conquer,” explains Michael Gartenberg, a tech strategist with Interpret. “That’s why companies continue to invest in this space, and we have a large number of bodies that are littered in this space.”

Let’s take a look at tablets past, present and future. If the upcoming tablets are to succeed, they’ll need to learn from hideous mistakes like the Apple Newton and the Tablet PC.

Origins
The origins of the tablet computer can be traced as far back as the 19th century. Electrical engineer Elisha Gray registered an 1888 patent (.pdf) describing an electrical-stylus device for capturing handwriting. Famous for his contributions to the development of the telephone, Gray’s idea with a “tablet” was not for drawing, but rather a method of using telegraph technology to transmit handwritten messages. (Think of it as a primitive form of instant messaging or e-mailing.)

Gray’s concept wasn’t merely a flat slab. His patent depicts two instruments: a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is a pen-like device connected to two electric circuits acting as interruptors. Current interruptions are used to translate the transmitter pen’s movements into signals transmitted to the receiver pen to mimic the movements, thereby reproducing the message on a piece of paper.

This description hardly sounds anything like a tablet, but later electronic-handwriting-recognition patents built from the idea of transmitting and receiving instruments, eventually combining them into one slab-shaped device like the tablets we see today.

The Apple Newton

The Newton MessagePad (above) was the first attempt by a major computer company at producing a commercial tablet-type computer for the mass market. Weighing in at about two pounds, Apple’s 1993 foray into tablet computing sported a powerful-for-its-time 20 MHz processor and a pen-centric interface. Writing recognition in the first version was so bad that it was famously mocked in a Doonesbury cartoon, and though it subsequently improved, the Newton never recovered from the initial PR blow. In 1998, Apple discontinued the Newton when Steve Jobs retook the helm as CEO, leaving a small coterie of true believers to keep the product’s memory alive.

PDAs and Smartphones

While no one refers to their iPhone as a “pocket tablet,” these devices are an important stage in the development of tablet computers.

Palm founder Jeff Hawkins learned from Apple’s mistakes and set out to build a pocket-sized computer that was smaller, cheaper, more modest in its ambitions and ultimately more useful than the Newton. He succeeded wildly with the 1996 launch of the Palm Pilot, spawning a long line of pen-based personal digital assistants from Palm, HP, Dell and others.

When Apple returned to the touchscreen world with the iPhone in 2007, it showed that it had paid close attention during the decade since the Newton flopped. The iPhone was simple, small, elegant and did a handful of things — make calls, browse the web, handle e-mail — very well. The fact that it wasn’t an all-purpose portable computer didn’t seem to matter so much compared to its usability and design.

Graphics tablets

Graphics tablets are computer input devices with a stylus-controlled interface. The technologies used vary, but generally all graphic tablets use the received signal to determine the horizontal and vertical position of the stylus, distance of the stylus from tablet surface and the tilt (vertical angle) of the stylus. Popular among digital illustrators, tablets facilitate a natural way to create computer graphics, especially 2-D illustrations.

Given their specialty, graphics tablets fill a niche for digital artists. Some consumer applications include writing Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters, working with handwriting recognition software to transfer them onto the computer. The stylus can also be used as a mouse.

However, for other languages, including English, the majority of consumers prefer typing on a keyboard for speedier writing, according to Gartenberg. Thus, the graphics tablet fills a niche in the design industry, but it is not a major product category in the consumer market. Wacom is the most prominent manufacturer producing graphics tablets today. (Example above: Wacom Bamboo Fun)

After stocking up on premium networks with HBO and Starz, Comcast’s On Demand Online project has added its first broadcast TV partner, CBS. One of the worries regarding TV Everywhere / On Demand Online has been what it would mean for free streaming portals like Hulu, with broadcasters potentially shifting content behind pay-tv walls to keep people from dropping cable and satellite TV subscriptions. CBS has been the notable Hulu holdout, although it has also pushed forward with free streaming on its website, including March Madness and even upping the resolution of its Flash video to 1080p. Further conflicting the issue? 17 more cable networks (A&E, AMC, BBC America, DIY Network, Fine Living Network, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, History, IFC, MGM Impact, Sundance Channel, WE tv, E!, The Style Network, G4 and FEARnet) have also announced plans to join the 5,000 subscriber trial.

Just like the previous agreements, it appears customers should expect access during the trial to reflect a lot of what CBS and the others already offer through standard VOD but now with more placeshifting goodness. While media execs watch the bottom line, we’re just hoping the stated CBS strategy of “open, non-exclusive distribution of our content in a consumer friendly way” (from the press release, available in full after the break) could push Hulu to add more HD, or at least unblock the PlayStation 3 & Windows Mobile.

Continue reading CBS, Comcast On Demand Online partnership faces off premium vs. free internet streaming; 17 cable channels jump onboard

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Internet

CBS, Comcast On Demand Online partnership faces off premium vs. free internet streaming; 17 cable channels jump onboard originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today we’re going to recommend that you visit a museum. “Oh, great,” you’re thinking, “that idiot Sorrel is going to start talking about some stupid place down the street from his house. Thanks a lot, Charlie.”

You’re right. But it’s also right down the street from your house. It’s the Canon Camera Museum, and as you can see from the aerial photo above, it’s a handsome place, and better still, the tickets are free. Click on over and you can find out about the dawn of the EOS system (excuse the pun) back in 1987 (I was a teenager with a Saturday job in a camera store back then, and my co-workers took me to the EOS launch to get me drunk and laugh at the result) and the entire history of Canon right back to 1933.

It’s a fascinating way to spend a few hours, or a few minutes, and for once we actually like the fact that it’s a Flash-based site that lets us flip around the campus. Go check it out, and find out such fascinating facts as the meaning of the Canon name (”standard for judgement or biblical scriptures”, weirdly) and the origins of the company’s first product (a Leica clone, showing that the company is proudly built on piracy).

Canon Camera Museum [Canon via Retro Thing]