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Sex Toys With Ridiculously Ancient Origins

Going strictly by popular culture, you’d be forgiven for thinking sex was invented sometime in the 1960s. Obviously our ancestors were getting it on long before that; Socrates invented Western thought while diddling little boys. But the ’60s were when sex became fun, right? Wrong. Turns out historical men (and women) were light-years ahead of us in the pleasure department, thanks to inventions like:

10

Blow-up Dolls

1904

Lady substitutes are recorded as far back as the seventeenth century, when French sailors devised the Dame de Voyage: a collection of curvaceous rags that could only ever resemble a woman to a homesick Frenchman. But it wasn’t until vulcanised rubber was patented that the more familiar model came about: in 1904, alchemist Rene Schwaeble recorded meeting a ‘Dr P.’ in Paris, who built inflatable dolls for discerning gentlemen.

Less than four years later, German sexologist Iwan Bloch was marvelling over mass-manufactured versions that could ‘imitate ejaculation’ on sale in Parisian catalogues. Creepiest of all though has to be the firm offering a custom doll resembling “any actual person, living or dead” – which has to be the single most disturbing tagline in the history of advertising.