The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction Read Free Page B

than I can remember or repay. Over the decade I spent writing this book, my two most important supports have been my husband, Garrel Pottinger, and my friend Karen Reeds. Although neither resorted to nagging, both made it clear that they would accept no excuses for my failing to complete the book.
    I have, of course, taxed the patience and ingenuity of any number of librarians, archivists, and curators. Among these, I owe the greatest debt to Elizabeth Ihrig and Albert Kuhfeld of the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Without the material the Bakken staff provided while I was a fellow there in the summer of 1985, this project would not have amounted to much more than a speculative article or two. The support of the Bakken Fellowship program enabled me to make the discoveries in the primary sources that convinced me I was on solid historical ground.
    The libraries of Cornell University, especially the History of Science collection, have proved invaluable, as have the collections of the National Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Charcot Library of the Salpêtrière in Paris, the Saratoga County Historical Society in Ballston Spa, New York, the Center for the History of American Needlework, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and the Saratoga Room collection on hydrotherapy and balneology at the Saratoga Springs (New York) Public Library.
    As sources of inspiration and guidance I must acknowledge Shere Hite of Hite Research, Joel Tarr of Carnegie-Mellon University, and myformer students at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, especially my Great Ideas in Western Culture students Marianne Incerpi and Gary Cassier. James Glynn III of Comtech, Incorporated, provided valuable insights into why so many people find this subject disturbing. Participants in seminars and meeting sessions asked important questions that needed answers at the 1986 meeting of the Society for the History of Technology at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, the University of Ottawa Hannah Lectures in the History of Medicine series, and the Cornell University Humanities Colloquium. Joani Blank of Down There Press and Good Vibrations in California provided useful material on early vibrators and has been a consistent source of encouragement, as was Dell Williams of Eve’s Garden in New York City.
    I owe a debt of gratitude to Robert J. Whelchel of Tri-State University and James Brittain of the Georgia Institute of Technology for their courageous decision to publish my article “Socially Camouflaged Technologies: The Case of the Electromechanical Vibrator,” in the July 1989 issue of the IEEE’s Technology and Society .
    My editors and reader at the Johns Hopkins University Press deserve credit for their courage and sensitivity, as well: series editor Merritt Roe Smith, history editor Bob Brugger, reader Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Sarah Cline of the acquisitions department, marketing manager Hilary Reeves, and production editor Kimberly Johnson. Alice Bennett provided the kind of meticulous copyediting which all authors should have and aren’t capable of doing for themselves.
    Gretchen Aguiar put a mind-numbingly long bibliography into a format that made it possible to find the references I needed when I needed them. Last but definitely not least, I doubt I would have found the courage to persist in my eccentricities, especially this one, had not my best friends cheered me on: Catherine Gatto Oliver, Judith Ruszkowski, Karen La Monica, and of course my mother, Natalie L. M. Petesch.

THE

TECHNOLOGY

OF

ORGASM

NOTE ON SOURCES
    In preparing this book I consulted over five hundred works. Readers will be relieved to learn that I do not propose to describe them all but only intend to sketch the outlines of my own journey through the various literatures that bear on the histories of medicine, technology, and sexuality. I am often asked if I did not have great