^* Described by Sherry Turkle in The Second Self.

^* Also called machine intelligence.

^† Heuristics are commonsense but often imperfect rules of thumb, designed to speed up the process of finding solutions to certain types of problems.

^‡ The accented letter C is pronounced like ch in “chicken.”

^§ Also known as Hero.

^** Until 1938 there had been some doubt about Heron’s dates, some sources believing him to have lived around 150 B.C. and others around A.D. 250. Then Otto Neugebauer noted that Heron had written about a “recent eclipse,” which, from the information given by Heron in his writings, was dated to one that took place at Alexandria on March 13, A.D. 62.

^* An extremely comprehensive and valuable account of the history of such automata is provided in two papers by Jessica Riskin.^{2, 3}

^† The only known example still extant is in the Musée Flaubert in Rouen, France, a museum of the history of medicine. Two photographs appear in Nina Gelbart’s The King’s Midwife.

^* Asimov’s laws, the first three of which were introduced to the public in his 1942 short story “Runaround,” are “1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” Later Asimov added the Zeroth Law: “A robot may not injure humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”

^* Sometimes called humanoids.

^† The Web site www.androidworld.com provides an extensive survey, with photographs, both of historical android projects and of current androids and domestic robots.

^* Cybernetics is the science of control and communication, with an emphasis on self-controlling and self-adaptive systems—that is, autonomous systems that can learn.

^* The term “transference” was originally coined in psychology to describe the process whereby a significant relationship early in one’s life can be responsible for transferring one’s feelings about that person to a psychoanalyst encountered later in life. For example, a patient who had a cold and distant father might view her psychoanalyst as being cold and distant. As transference theory developed within the field of psychology, so the term also came to refer to a similar phenomenon with people other than one’s psychoanalyst. Recent psychoanalytic thinking has further adapted the term to apply “to relationships people have with modern technologies, especially computers.” ⁵ The subject of transference is discussed further in chapter 5.

^† See pages 97–99.

^‡ See pages 16–17.

^* Soccer matches between teams of robots have become a major international technical sport since its inception in 1996.

^† Some two thousand bytes of data.

^* Or, more generally, between a child and its primary caregiver.

^* Throughout this book, when discussing the interaction between a user and a computer, I employ the word “computer” to mean the combination of the computer hardware (the box, the keyboard, the mouse, and the screen) with whatever software it is running (the programs that make the computer do clever things). What the user actually interacts with is the software. The computer keyboard, the mouse, the text on the computer screen, and any speech output that the user hears are all merely the means by which the user interacts with the software. The software itself is invisible, leading the user to talk about his interaction as being with the computer rather than with the computer-software combination.

^* We shall return to the subject of attachment in chapter 3.

^* Given the social mores of the time, the vast majority of these couples would not have been living together but would instead have been living in different apartments in the same building.

^* See the section “Falling in Love on the Internet,” later in this chapter.

^* Researchers know the general area of the brain where various functions occur, such as speech, sensation, and memory. An fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scan provides a picture of the brain and helps to determine precisely which part of the brain is dealing with certain functions.

^† The average length of time these students had been in love was twenty-nine months.

^* Lawrence Belove (in 1980), Philip Shaver et al. (in 1987), and Dorothy Tennov (in 1979).

^† However, proximity can lead to being alone with the love object, which is one of the ten causes.

^* How well people’s similarities match, how well they “fit together,” is not only important in bringing them together, it is also a key factor in how gratifying their relationship will be and how long it is likely to be sustained.

^* See the section “Why People Fall in Love,” page 33.

^* See the final sentence of the section “Why People Fall in Love,” page 35.

^* This is not the case if both parties decide from the outset to use webcams and speech-transmission technology, but at the present time these are employed in a small minority of early Internet relationships.

^* Listserv is a leading e-mail list-management program that facilitates the administration of various types of e-mail lists, such as discussion groups.

^* I should perhaps confess to some bias on this subject, having lived with as many as four cats at the same time, all of whom slept on our bed, ate mounds of fish and chicken, and were whisked off to the vet at the slightest indication of illness. Sadly, Ginger, Muffin, and Smoky have all died fairly recently, aged between eighteen and nineteen (in human terms, ninety to ninety-five), and were duly cremated, their ashes lovingly scattered in the garden. Fred is still alive and well at the time of this writing.

^* This is true not only in the case of pet owners. When I take my cat to the vet, she talks to the cat, referring to me as “Daddy.”

^† This may not always be the reason for speaking motherese since it is also used in intimate adult relationships.

^‡ The tradition that one can only understand the characteristics of any species by observations made in the natural (as opposed to experimental) context.

^* At an August 2003 wedding in Settle, England, the couple’s Alsatian, Barney, was dressed in a bow tie for the occasion, and it goes without saying that he accompanied the newlyweds on their honeymoon.

^† For example, as reported in the “people” section of the South Bend Tribune, October 2, 1979, page 2, and in Reader’s Digest, volume 116, February 1980, page 136.

^‡ These are prices as of late 2005.

^§ According to my calculation, that makes the cost of the T-shirt seventy-five dollars—a real bargain!

^* The earliest attempts to use animals for therapeutic purposes appear to predate this by almost two centuries. In 1792, William Tuke and several other Quakers in York, England, established a retreat where the mentally ill could be cared for much more humanely than was usual in those days. Tuke’s idea was to provide farm animals for the patients to look after, believing that this activity would reduce the patients’ aggressive instincts and improve their discipline and self-control.

^* What little research has been carried out with pets other than cats and dogs has been insufficient to demonstrate any comparable benefits.

^† For the purposes of her experiment, she defined happiness as “a satisfaction with life and a general sense of well-being.”

^* Equivalent to $1.2 billion U.S. at that time.

^† In order to determine how close a pet owner feels to their pet, Headey employed a “closeness to pet” measure that averages the answers to four questions, in which the subjects were asked to say whether they agreed or disagreed with certain statements: (a) “I feel close to my pet”; (b) “When things go wrong, it is comforting to be with my pet”; (c) “Having a pet around when people visit me makes it easier to get into conversation and create a friendly atmosphere”; and (d) “I have sometimes got to know people and made friends through having pets.”

^* Social support is a network of family, friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances to whom one can turn, whether in times of crisis or simply for fun and entertainment.

^* With only a little license, Alan Turing’s famous test for intelligence in a computer can be summarized thus: If a computer appears to be intelligent, then we should accept that it is intelligent.

^* See the section “Attachment and Love,” page 26.

^* The Second Self was reprinted in 2005 in a “twentieth anniversary edition” with an update section added.

^† A microprocessor is a single computer chip that performs the “thinking” function.

^* Often called “security objects.”

^† Winnicott presented this essay at a meeting of the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1951, but it was not published until 1953.

^* A highly proficient and enthusiastic computer programmer—a “virtuoso programmer,” to quote Sherry Turkle.

^* See also the section “Attachment and Love,” page 26.

^* The replicability of robots and one of its major implications are discussed in the section “Three Routes to Falling in Love with Robots,” page 127.

^* See also the section “Attachment and Love,” page 26.

^† For those readers with some interest in AI, this is not the John McCarthy from Stanford University who coined the term “artificial intelligence” in 1955 but the applied psychologist from University College, Cork.

^* Bill Yeager points out that for masochists enchantment could involve a sense of pain and that many hackers fit into this category, because programming, solving tough problems, and fixing programming bugs are perceived by some as painful yet enjoyable.

^* In line with his comment in the previous footnote, Yeager draws a parallel with the “dark side” of computing that attracts some people—those annoyances experienced when your computer hardware misbehaves, when your Internet connection fails for some reason, when pop-up advertisements appear when you least want them to, when your e-mail experience is harassed by spam or disrupted by a virus. These are irritations for most of us but provide a source of masochistic pleasure, thrill, joy, and apprehension for some.

^* This was a game of “speed” chess, in which each player has only a few minutes to make all their moves.

^* Bill Yeager makes the interesting observation that many of the remarks made about computers, such as Stean’s, are inadvertent (i.e., subconscious) and knee-jerk reactions, and that eventually the dividing line between the human and robot species might become so fine that the idea of anthropomorphism, as it relates to robots, will disappear altogether.

^* I find the use of the term “mindless” in their paper to be most unfortunate in the connotations of stupidity that it suggests. The authors adopt “mindlessness” from a 1992 paper by Ellen Langer, where “subconscious” would in my view be far more appropriate. Where I paraphrase extracts of Nass and Moon’s fascinating paper, I have therefore replaced “mindless” with “subconscious.”

^* Use of the word “computer” here implies a combination of a computer and its software.

^* For example, the dominant/submissive computer experiment discussed in the section “Robot Personalities and Their Influence on Relationships,” page 132.

^* They define the anthropomorphism of computers as a belief that computers are essentially human, a considerably stronger connection than that usually implied by the use of the word.

^† Evidence for this phenomenon can be found in chapter 1, in the “Similarity” subsection of “Ten Causes of Falling in Love,” page 38.

^* See the previous section.

^† The games required the human subjects to make a binary choice at each move—for example, zero or one, heads or tails. The computer program would try to guess what choice was coming next. The humans tried to fool the computer program by varying their choosing strategy.

^‡ The software “knows” in the sense that you and I know something, by remembering. That the software can readily be perceived by us as knowing something is a prime example of how you and I anthropomorphize computers. I could have written, more precisely, “The software stores the knowledge that…,” but there is no need to be pedantic, since it is already generally accepted that computers “know” whatever it is that is stored in their computer memories. I’m grateful to Bill Yeager for pointing out that I am as guilty as anyone of anthropomorphizing in this way.

^* It would perhaps be useful to remind the reader that throughout this book, when discussing any aspect of human-computer interaction, I employ the word “computer” to mean the combination of the computer hardware (the box, screen, keyboard, and mouse) with whatever software it is running. Here, for example, what the user is actually trusting is the software with which the user is interacting. But because the user sees the computer, feels the keyboard and the mouse, and because it is the computer that displays and possibly speaks the output generated by the software, while the software itself is invisible, the user talks about their interaction as being with the computer rather than the computer-software combination.

^* Chapter 10.

^* See the section “Emotions in Humans and in Robots,” page 118.

^† This applies when talking to extroverts, but no effect has been found in conversations with introverts.

^‡ “Expert systems” as the name suggests, are computer-based systems that incorporate human expertise, usually in the form of the “rules” that human experts employ when making judgments and recommendations. It has been found that users of such systems place more trust in a system’s decision-making capabilities if the system explains its thinking to the user by referring to or describing the rules it employed when making a particular decision.

^* The name is a diminutive form of the Japanese word tamago (egg) and is thus intended to convey the idea of a lovable egg.

^† The heyday of the original Tamagotchi was the second half of 1997. A new version was launched in the summer of 2005.

^‡ Liquid crystal display.

^* Volume 13, page 483.

^* Ethology is a study of animals in their natural surroundings.

^† At www.aibo.com.

^* Chatterbot (or chatbot) is the generic name of the ELIZA-like programs that can carry on a conversation, appearing always to understand the user’s previous utterance while in fact understanding absolutely nothing.

^* Emotional intelligence is defined by Daniel Goleman, the originator of the concept, as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”

^* An early form of computer keyboard.

^* See also the section “On Anthropomorphism,” page 74.

^* Referred to by its designers as a “deliberative layer.”

^† Text-to-speech is a speech-synthesis technology that allows the software to say any word, based on its spelling and its assumed pronunciation. It is not therefore limited only to a fixed, preprogrammed vocabulary.

^* Philosophers have been debating various arguments on this topic since the 1950s at least. One prominent philosopher, Sidney Hook, observed in 1959 that when robots claim they have feelings, our acceptance of their claims will depend on “whether they look like and behave like other people we know.” This argument is very similar to the one presented here.

^† In 1950, Turing asked this question in his famous paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” arguably the most important publication in the history of artificial intelligence.

^* This muscle is called zygomaticus major.

^† This muscle is corrugator supercilii.

^* The sixth emotion proposed by Ekman, disgust, was not felt appropriate for the type of interactions that Feelix’s designers expected humans to have with the robot.

^* The autonomic nervous system is that part of the vertebrate nervous system that regulates involuntary action—for example, the actions of the intestines, the heart, and the glands.

^* See page 32.

^* In the case of a relationship dyad, the word “all” relates, of course, to both partners in the relationship.

^* This task requires the participants to imagine themselves as copilots of a plane that has crash-landed in the desert and to decide on the order of importance of twelve objects that might help in their survival, such as a quart of water and a flashlight. Each participant in a pair (in this case one computer and one human) exchanges their initial rankings with the partner and discusses each object. These discussions enable experimental psychologists to measure the assertiveness of each participant.

^* The personality of each of the human subjects was tested for dominance and submissiveness using a standard personality test commonly employed by psychologists.

^* Among the names most often associated with this research are Christoph Bartneck in the Netherlands at Eindoven University of Technology, Cynthia Brezeal at MIT, Lola Cañamaro at the University of Hertfordshire in England, and Sara Kiesler and Illah Nourbakhsh at Carnegie Mellon University.

^†September 1, 2004.

^‡ December 20, 2005.

^* Jong Hwan-Kim was the originator of the robot soccer competitions that have become enormously popular within the electronics and software communities as an intercollegiate and intercorporate sport.

^* For a little more on robot reproduction, see the footnote on page 188.

^† Homeostasis is a creature’s ability or tendency to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes.

^* See the section “Robot Personalities and Their Influence on Relationships,” page 132.

^* See the section “Designing Robot Personalities,” pages 136–40.

^* See the section “Attachment and Relationships with Objects,” page 65.

^* The robot’s preset parameters will doubtless include a “polygamy” option, to cater to those religions and cultures in which monogamous relationships are not the norm.

^* The Ethnographic Atlas has data on 1,231 societies studied during the period 1960–80, of which only 186 were monogamous societies, while 453 had occasional polygyny (in which a man has more than one female sexual partner simultaneously), 588 had more frequent polygyny, and 4 had polyandry (in which a woman has more than one male sexual partner simultaneously). Since the nonmonogamous societies are in general much smaller than the monogamous ones in terms of population, these statistics do not indicate that monogamy is the status of the minority of the world’s population. Far from it.

^† See chapter 8.

^* One exception that I do not believe will be eroded, and for very good reasons, is the issue of consent. In my view it should always be an essential prerequisite that the partners in a marriage should agree to it and should be legally considered competent to make such an agreement.

^* See the discussion on similarity in chapter 1 (page 38).

^* See the section “Robot Recognition of Human Emotions,” page 124.

^* DigiScents.

^† Trisenx (www.trisenx.com), the French company Exhalia (www.exhalia.com), SAV Products of California (www.savproducts.com), and an (as-yet-anonymous) Israeli company all appear to have similar technology.

^* David Cope, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has developed a program called EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) that composes music in the style of Mozart, Chopin, or Scott Joplin, among others. And another California professor, Harold Cohen, has developed AARON, a drawing and painting program whose talents include controlling a robot that can wield paintbrushes with skill and even knows when the paint pot is running dry.

^* “Mainframe” was the term used for large, powerful computers that often served many connected terminals and were usually installed at large organizations.

^* An excellent and often updated source on the topic of humanoids is the Web site Historical Android Projects at www.androidworld.com.

^* A good way to stay abreast of the latest in robotic achievements and capabilities is to visit the Web site of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence at www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/robots.html and select the “General Index by Topic to AI in the News.”

^* This fetish also goes under the name “agalmatophilia.”

^* See the introduction, page 3.

^* The glands located on either side of the vaginal orifice that secrete a lubricating mucus.

^† This translation of pages 247–53 of Schwaeblé’s book is by John Sugden.

^* In fact Hoffman and Bolton employed the range 1 to 5, but here the numbers have been converted to the scale 0 to 4 for ease of comparison with Leigh’s results.

^* The scores in Table 4 have been converted, for ease of comparison, from the scale of 1 to 9, as used by Deborah Davis and her colleagues, to the scale of 0 to 4 as in Tables 2 and 3. Table 4 is presented in descending order of the mean scores from male and female respondents.

^* The idea of human-robot procreation is not as ludicrous as it first appears. In Robots Unlimited, I describe some of the self-reproducing robots that have already been created by scientists at Brandeis University, robots that can design and build other robots, including exact replicas of themselves. My description includes the explanation that in future decades a robot will have the capacity to find certain characteristics in its human owner appealing and to design those characteristics into the next robot that it builds.

^* For example, Kim Binsted’s program JAPE, which creates puns.

^* See page 163.

^* Lars O. Ericsson, in a 1980 article in the journal Ethics 90.

^† Die Prostitution in Berlin und ihre Opfer.

^* In 1944 and 1948.

^† The dust jacket of his memoires, Gentlemen for Rent, proclaims that his service in New York was launched with the blessing of a host of celebrities, including Lucius Beebe, Maury Paul, Walter Winchell, Danton Walker, and Louis Sobol, and that in London he was “sponsored by the Duke of Kent.”

^* Shown as part of the BBC’s Under the Sun series on December 15, 1997, watched by an estimated 4.8 million viewers.

^* November 8, 2002.

^* Sometimes there is indeed a desire to marry, as that will often provide the man with a First World passport and therefore an exit from his Third World poverty, and sometimes the woman will return to the same vacation spot and to the same man, eventually sending him a plane ticket so that she can import him to her own country.

^* And for those men who wish to take up heterosexual prostitution as a career, and to learn the tricks of the trade, there is an online gigolo school called Gigolo International that will doubtless teach you everything you need to know. The site advertises membership for $49.95, with the news that “Modern upscale (working) women are always busy and have become more emancipated regarding paid (erotic) company. This could be a dinner-date, a short business-trip or even a fully paid vacation! These women need a man to share quality time without troubles afterwards and they will gladly pay for the right services. Did you ever dream of becoming Gigolo? This could be your first step into a whole new lifestyle! The members-section contains: Gigolo’s tricks of the trade; How to become an independent Gigolo; Independent Gigolo promotional tools; The Ultimate Gigolo; Exclusive discount for members; Increase your female-contact skills; New tips and updates every month; Earn additional TOP$$ with our unique referral-program.”

^* The Hanky Panky School inspired a delightful parody of the same idea in India, in a March 31, 2005, article by Sidhi Chadh in the Hindustan Times, entitled “Now Learn Prostitution in School.” It commenced, “A Diploma in Sex Trade? That will be among the several qualifications on offer when a government-sponsored school for prostitutes opens in the capital on Friday. The move to encourage sex workers who are fully trained in their craft comes just days after the U.S. threatened to impose sanctions unless the administration did something to regulate the flesh trade in the country.” The article also explains that “the girls will learn everything from seduction to handling finances. Besides giving the girls useful tips about sex, we will also tell them how to seduce clients and extract maximum money.”

^† Of course, there might be robot prostitutes, for johns who lack the resources or the inclination to purchase a sexual robot for use at home, and if there are robot prostitutes, then there will also be robot brothels, staffed by robots for the benefit of humans.

^* Attending these programs wipes out the record of the participant’s arrest, thereby ensuring that almost all those who are arrested for attempting to hire prostitutes in these three jurisdictions take up the offer of attending a johns school.

^† A survey conducted among 3,422 respondents between February and October 1992 across all fifty states of the United States.

^* And given that most men who employ the services of prostitutes do not suffer any loss of self-esteem for doing so, it seems reasonable to assume that most men who use sex robots will similarly not suffer from an undue loss of self-esteem.

^* Carmen Caldas-Coulthard.

^† The reason given by the tenth woman was that her husband wanted her to do it (while he watched).

^‡ The names of the women were, of course, changed for publication.

^* Other reasons given by Ryan’s clients in these interviews are: “He’s very inventive sexually, and that’s why I keep seeing him—it’s always fun, it’s always something new” (i.e., the variety motive); “I find it quite exciting to pay for it. I find that quite sexy”; and “They’ve got to have something, a spark, and a big penis as well.”

^* At www.icasa.co.uk.

^† Causes that originate in the mind or in mental or emotional processes, rather than being of a physiological nature.

^* “Paroxysm” was a term formerly employed for “orgasm.”

^* A second-century Greek physician, the most famous physician in the Roman Empire.

^† An eleventh-century Persian physician.

^‡ Gradus, also known as Giovanni Matteo Ferrari da Gradi, was a fifteenth-century Italian physician.

^* Hammers.

^* A hard rubber.

^* Granville’s book has an unfortunate typographical error here—the word is printed as “males,” though the text makes it quite clear that he intended it to be “females.”

^† “Mimetic disease” (a psychological complaint associated with mimicry) is a term often found linked to “hysteria” in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century medical writings.

^* The U.S. Food and Drug Administration—the body responsible for controlling all things medical that are sold in the United States.

^† The entire affidavit is available at http://www.libidomag.com/nakedbrunch/ maines.html.

^* See the next section, “The Popularity of Vibrators: Orgasms on Demand.”

^* Twenty-seven percent of all those who responded to the 2004 Durex Global Sex Survey and answered its question on the ownership of vibrators said that they did own a vibrator or an intimate massager. The figure was even higher in both the age groups from twenty-five to thirty-four and forty-five-plus, with more than one-third of respondents being owners. The survey also found, not surprisingly, that vibrators are more popular with women than with men but did not address the question of how many of the male owners used their vibrators on themselves and how many reserved their use for female partners. And as to which countries were shown by the survey to have achieved the highest market penetration for this product category, Iceland led the way with 52 percent of those surveyed, followed by Norway with 50 percent, the United Kingdom with 49, the United States and Sweden both 43, Australia 42, Denmark 41, and China 40 percent. (The lowest usage was found to be in Thailand and Vietnam, with 6 percent and 5 percent respectively.) The statistic for the United States is broadly in line with the results of a survey among more than 1,600 American women, conducted by Knowledge Networks, an independent polling and market-research firm in California. Their survey results were published by the Berman Center and indicated that 51 percent of women in the age group twenty-five to thirty-four had used a vibrator, reducing to between 41 and 46 percent in most other age groups and to 32 percent in the fifty-five to sixties.

^* According to the Web site www.cakenyc.com.

^† German patent number 825,137. Sprenger’s invention consisted of a hollow cylinder made of glass or some other material, to which an air-evacuation device such as a pump could be connected at one end. The purpose of the invention was described as being to overcome sexual impotence in men, which according to Sprenger’s patent application is nearly always based on an inadequate blood supply to the erectile tissue of the penis. To operate the device, the penis was inserted and the air sucked out of the cylinder by the pump, thereby creating a vacuum inside the cylinder. The resulting excess pressure forced blood into the erectile tissue, causing an erection. Springer admitted that on first use the erection may weaken when the container is removed, but he claimed that after repeated use the erection would persist.

^* German patent number 835,637. The invention was a sleeve made of a watertight and highly elastic material such as rubber, which had a double wall containing sufficient compressed air to the extent necessary for the sleeve to preserve its own shape. To use the device, it is moderately inflated and then slipped over the penis “before commencement of the sex act. The erection which initially occurs is maintained by pumping an appropriate quantity of air into the inner space (marked 14 on the drawing) by means of the rubber bulb (marked 16)…. On suitable repeated use of the device, this pressure massage at the moment of erection causes a noticeable invigoration of the weakened muscles, so that in due course the massage device will become unnecessary. The desired therapeutic effect is further enhanced by suitable massaging when not performing intercourse.”
Clearly, there would be immense practical problems for a man wearing this device on his penis while entering and moving inside his partner and simultaneously operating the rubber bulb in order to maintain his erection. In fact, these difficulties seem so overbearing that one wonders whether this description of the use of the device was not merely a sop to distract prudish German patent officers and whether the intended purpose of the invention was perhaps as a sex machine, human partner not required. This scandalous suggestion might explain the inventors’ enthusiasm in recommending “suitable massaging when not performing intercourse.”

^* Barrio’s patent document does not make any mention of the word “penis” or any other part of the anatomy. Instead it merely devotes two and a half lines, less than one-fiftieth of the entire text of the patent, to reveal that “one of its principal applications is that of an auxiliary means for the achieving of sexual intercourse in the case of people who are old, paralysed etc.”

^* Yet another invention from the 1970s, with a very similar purpose, was a “massaging apparatus,” patented in 1976 by Ulrich Glage and his wife, Gisela, of Hamburg, Germany.
The Glages’ invention “relates to a device or apparatus for massaging elongated part of the human body, and especially for applying massage to stimulate and enhance the ability for erection.” It consisted of a vibrating plastic tube lined with fleshlike rubber that would fit around the entire length of a penis and would operate autonomously or with the added help of the human hand. “The invention provides an apparatus for massage comprising an elongated hollow cylindrical sheath having one closed end and so designed that the outside of the sheath is connected to a vibrating device containing means for the simultaneous generation of two different mechanical vibrations.”

^* All these and some eight hundred other sex devices are described in Hoag Levins’s 1996 book American Sex Machines: The Hidden History of Sex at the U.S. Patent Office, a survey spanning 150 years of sex inventions.

^† See page 256.

^‡ See pages 253–56.

^§ Available at www.vrinnovations.com.

^** Their emphasis, not mine.

^* Meaning that they were rather expensive.

^† See also Bloch’s description (in the introduction to part two), pages 178–80.

^* An article posted on the Internet by Norbert Lenz in 2005 gave an account of “the world’s first sex doll,” a project initiated by Heinrich Himmler during World War II, with the idea of satisfying the sexual urges of the German troops in France while at the same time keeping the troops away from the disease-ridden prostitutes with whom many of them consorted. This article was taken up by other Web sites and subsequently published by the German newspaper Bild and in at least one Scandanavian newspaper. Rather than being of any historic interest, the article was merely an April Fools’ Day hoax, and Norbert Lenz is likely a pseudonym. What I find most interesting about this article’s publication is that many people believed it, demonstrating that in 2005 there was already a significant measure of belief in the viability of sex robots.

^† In the 1970s, Sullivan spotted a gap in the soft-porn market and has since built a $1 billion media empire that includes the newspapers Daily Sport and Sunday Sport.

^* A comprehensive line of sex dolls and other sex machines is shown, for example, on www.fuckingmachines.com.

^* Cyberskin is a natural-feeling material that mimics human flesh. It is formed by combining silicone and latex.

^* The branch of medicine dealing with the reproductive and excretory organs.

^† See page 215.

^* December 11, 2003.

^* Dacapo is a Japanese news digest with a focus on current event feature stories.

^† April 21, 2004.

^‡ The most authoritative explanation for the origin of the term “Dutch wives” is found in Alan Pate’s 2005 book Ningyo¯: The Art of the Japanese Doll. They were originally leather dolls carried aboard Dutch merchant ships, beginning in the seventeenth century; and through their interaction with the Dutch on the trade island of Deshima, established by the Dutch East India company in 1641, the Japanese became familiar with the practice. Pate’s own source for this origin was Mitamura Engyo’s book Takeda Hachidai—Eight Generations of the Takeda Family.

^§ See page 93.

^* April 16, 2005.

^* The machine was named after Sybaris, an ancient city of the Greek Empire that was built on what is now the Gulf of Taranto in southern Italy. The city became wealthy, and its inhabitants were reputed to enjoy lives of unrestrained sensual pleasure, providing the origins of the word “sybaritic.”

^† December 1987.

^* Airs’s enthusiasm for the proliferation of sex aids is perfectly understandable—she quit a research position at Harvard in 1993 to found Grand Opening, a woman’s sex-toy store, where sales in 2005 were running at around $1 million in each of her two branches.

^† Also called the “female self-gratifier.”

^‡ This image appears on page 604 of the Sexualwissenschaft (Sexology) volume of Bilder-Lexicon (1930) , a German illustrated encyclopedia that described itself as “a reference work for all areas of medical, legal and sociological studies into sex.”

^§ Strangely enough, these included the offense of copulation with a statue, which was “classified as a misdemeanor (a public nuisance coupled with indecent exposure) and also claimed compensation in the form of a fine (if the statue was damaged or ‘sullied’).”¹⁶

^* Hirschfeld opened the institute in July 1919, the first of its kind in the world, attempting to establish sexuality as a science. The institute had a staff of more than forty, working in many different fields: research, sexual counseling, the treatment of venereal diseases, and public sex education. It also hosted the main offices of both the Scientific Humanitarian Committee—the world’s first homosexual organization—and the World League for Sexual Reform. From the outset the institute was defamed and denounced by the Nazis as “Jewish,” “Social-Democratic,” and “offensive to public morals.” Hirschfeld eventually fled to France, and the institute was vandalized, looted, and shut down in May 1933.

^* At www.uspto.gov.

^† U.S. patent number 5,725,473.

^* In the form of an arc or bow.

^* The word “teledildonics,” sometimes referred to as “cyberdildonics,” was the creation of Lee Felsenstein during the 1989 Hackers’ Conference. It is often wrongly credited to Theodor Nelson.

^* Pertaining to the sense of touch.

^* This is more than thirty times the number of images processed per second by the human eye.

^* At that time I was Scottish Chess Champion and was soon to be awarded the “International Master” title.

^* The Times, generally an extremely reliable source, gives the spelling as Nicoll, whereas in the broadside it is Nichols.

^† Broadsides, later known as broadsheets, were news posters, each one usually devoted to a single news item.

^* The record of public executions in Britain for 1835 makes no mention of Bonnell’s execution, nor does the Times, so presumably he was either reprieved or acquitted on appeal.

^* A 1920 act of Parliament intended to control, by the use of draconian powers, who could come to Britain and their behavior once in Britain. The term “harmful act” was employed in relation to this act of Parliament, in order to bring before the courts people who had committed a variety of “offenses.”

^† Amazingly, it was only in January 2005 that the state of Virginia repealed a law dating back to the early nineteenth century, banning sexual relations between two unmarried, consenting, heterosexual adults. In fact, that law had not been enforced since 1847, but it took this long for Virginia to accept, formally, that private relationships should be immune from government interference.

^* A penance is a sacrament in some Christian churches that includes contrition, confession to a priest, acceptance of punishment, and absolution. In England, until the nineteenth century, the courts of the established church would punish those who were found to have committed certain moral offenses such as defamation, fornication, and adultery. Typical of such punishments is the following order, imposed by the Lichfield consistory court to the ministers of the parish churches of Walsall and Rushall and the chapel of Bloxwich, “to call before them Ann Bickley to do penance for fornication.” Ann was required to visit each of the churches on successive Sundays and “during all the Time of Divine-Service shall stand upon a low Stool placed before the Reading-Desk, in the Face of the Congregation then assembled, being cloathed in a white Sheet, in her Stocking Feet, with her Hair about her ears, and having a white Wand in her hand, and immediately after the End of the second Lesson the said Ann Bickley shall (with an audible Voice) make her humble Confession, as follows: WHEREAS I Ann Bickley not having the Fear of God before mine eyes, but being led by the Instigation of the Devil, and my own carnal Concupiscence, have committed the Crime of Fornication with William Seney To the Dishonour of Almighty God, the Breach of his most sacred Laws, The Scandal and evil Example of others, and the Danger of my own Soul without unfeigned Repentance; I do humbly acknowledge, and am heartily sorry for this my heinous Offense, I ask God Pardon and Forgiveness for the same, in Jesus Christ, and pray him to give me his Grace, not only to enable me to avoid all such like Sin and Wickedness, but also to live Soberly, Righteously and Godly, all the Days of my Life. And to that End I desire all you that are here present to join me in saying the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father, etc.”

^* A.D. 350–430.

^* Tissot’s book L’Onanisme, ou Dissertation Physique sur les Maladies Produites par la Masturbation (Masturbation: Physical Dissertation on the Illnesses it Produces) ran to hundreds of editions, variations, and plagiarized publications, throughout Europe and America, stretching well into the twentieth century and thereby creating a worldwide fear of masturbation that continues to be problematic for young and old alike.

^† The following extracts from Boy Scout manuals are reported by Jean Stengers and Anne van Neck.

^* Cybersex is sexual activity or arousal through communication by computer.

^† Personal digital assistants.

^‡ Another term for humanoid.

^* At www.cheyennelive.com.

^* See page 146.

^† Devices that create movement.

^* An android made in the (human) female form. This is not necessarily the same as a fembot, which is usually taken to mean a robot having artificial female genitalia or suitable substitutes in the form of haptic interfaces.

^* See page 267.

^* See page 179.