Crackpots and entrepreneurs massage imagination to create artificial sex device
For men, it could mean sex without the cost and hassle of wining, dining and dazzling an intended conquest. For women, it evokes the possibility of experiencing an orgasm.
I am referring to that quasi-mythical joy machine called the orgasmatron. The machine first appeared in the 1968 film Barbarella, where Jane Fonda played a 41st-century space adventurer.
A similar machine graced Woody Allen's 1973 film Sleeper, set in 2173, in which Allen climbed into the machine, which resembled a white sarcophagus, and experienced instant sexual ecstasy.
Every year, some crackpot or other pops up claiming he has built an orgasmatron. The press release usually says something like this: 'Professor Sharon Schizmeister simply flicked the switch and then began to moan, hyperventilate and convulse'.
If anyone succeeds in inventing a machine that makes us feel fractionally better, even momentarily, it will fly off the shelves like diet pills. Alas, the quality of the two 'orgasmatrons' available now is doubtful.