Unconventional Vibrators

Since it's that road-trip time of year, my thoughts drift back to the 1970's when my own family piled into the Skylark and navigated the roads of the American Midwest. Since that would have obviously been  pre-internet, the only way to comparison shop the hotels was to read their neon signs as you whizzed by. Signs proclaimed "heated pool", "color TV" - my favorite sign had some words that ran together to read "air conditioned switchboard". But what about those signs that also included the mystically named "magic fingers"?

In 1958, John Houghtaling invented Magic Fingers, a device mounted onto a hotel bed that would shake the mattress under you for 15 minutes, promising escape from the work-a-day non-vibrating bed world. Let me describe the experience to you. First you drop 25 cents into the coin box at the head of the bed. There is a buzz from deep within the mattress, and very quickly the fine lines printed on the bedspread go into soft focus. Panicked, you wonder whether it's scientifically possible to rattle the eyes out of your head. Eventually you are able to let go and enjoy the body massage by imagining that you are sleeping on a giant purring cat. You're able to forget for a while that you're in a cheap motel, that the vibrating bed has probably been used less for its therapeutic advantages, and more as a giant kinky toy. That's right, forget it all, let go... and right when you've drifted off into a quarter-fueled zen state, your time is up and the bed grinds to a halt. You rack your brain trying to remember where you may have stashed some more change, and the cycle begins again.

[Ref1]

In the 1950s, Houghtaling was still working as a salesman, this time selling vibrating beds in which the vibrating motor and bed were sold as a single unit that was clumsy, expensive, and prone to failure.[1] At a service call for a broken unit, Houghtaling realized that the vibrating motor was the essential component, not the bed, and that a unit could be developed that would attach to any bed, not just the combination vibrating bed units he was selling.[3] Houghtaling worked in the basement of his Glen Rock, New Jersey, home and tested hundreds of motors before finding one that weighed relatively little, could be attached to the box springs of an existing bed, and would provide the right level of vibration. Once a quarter was inserted into the attached coin meter, the motor would vibrate the bed for 15 minutes.[1] The coin mechanisms were modeled on similar devices that had been attached to radios and televisions in hotels.[3] The devices were sold through franchisees who installed the units in hotels based on an arrangement in which revenues would be split, with $1 million in annual sales of the units. There were 250,000 Magic Fingers units installed nationwide at their peak of popularity in the 1960s, with each unit averaging eight quarters per week, bringing in $2 million in monthly gross revenue.[4]

By the last half of the 1970s, more than a million Magic Fingers units had been installed in American and European hotels and houses. The devices started to seem out of date and somewhat sleazy, because of the bed's association with seedy motels, and their popularity declined starting in the 1980s as other in-room entertainment options became available and theft of money from the coin boxes started to become more common. Houghtaling sold the rights to the Magic Fingers name after he retired in the 1980s, with the new owner manufacturing units for home use at the time of his death in 2009. Though the devices are rarely seen in the 21st century, they were still available in motels in the Western United States at the time of his death.[1]

The vibrating bed was frequently featured in 1960s–1980s movies and TV shows. It was mentioned by name in songwriter Steve Goodman's "This Hotel Room", sung by Jimmy Buffett, which included the line "Put in a quarter / Turn out the light / Magic Fingers makes you feel all right."[1] and is also mentioned in Buck Owens's "World Famous Paradise Inn." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five also referred to Houghtaling's Magic Fingers; the protagonist Billy Pilgrim used the vibrating bed to help him fall asleep. Magic Fingers was also seen in the 1997 film Lolita, the 1998 Clay Pigeons, and the episode of CSI Vegas "Assume Nothing" (season 4, episode 1). In the classic 1983 National Lampoon film Vacation, Clark and Ellen Griswold can be seen relaxing on a Magic Fingers bed that goes rogue, vibrating excessively and forcing them onto the floor. In the X-Files episode Bad Blood (Season 5, episode 12) Dana Scully used one in a Texas motel, before being interrupted by Mulder, telling her that she had to go perform an autopsy at that moment. She complained "but I just put money in the Magic Fingers." It has been referenced twice in The Simpsons, once as a couch gag and once in the episode "The Cartridge Family" in which Marge takes the kids to the Sleep Eazy (the neon sign is partially burned out to read "Sleazy") Hotel; Bart and Lisa turn on the Magic Fingers and race their vibrating beds across the hotel room. It was also featured several times in the TV showSupernatural. Dean is very fond of the magic fingers as seen in season 2 ep 13.

Ref1: http://www.retrothing.com/2007/06/magic_fingers_v.html

Ref2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Houghtaling