John Joseph Houghtaling, the inventor of the “Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed,” which brought weary travelers 15 minutes of “tingling relaxation and ease” for a quarter in hotel rooms across America, has died. He was 92.
During its heyday in the 1960s and ’70s, Magic Fingers was a pop culture icon.
In a 1963 New York Times profile, Houghtaling said he was selling beds with a built-in vibrating mechanism when he realized during a repair job that it would be much cheaper to create something that would attach to the outside of an existing bed.
“After ripping away the frills, I found that it was the vibrator that counted, not the bed,” he recalled. “Magic Fingers was born then and there.”
In its heyday, there were about 175 Magic Fingers franchise operators across the country, and the gadgets collected $6,000 to $7,000 a month in quarters, Houghtaling’s son said.
By the late 1970s, dealers complained they spent more money to repair devices that thieves broke open. Houghtaling developed a debit card-like system for the machines to replace the coin slots, but the idea never took off.
“He was trying to move it to a cashless mechanism so people wouldn’t have any reason to break into them,” his son said. “Unfortunately, it was kind of ahead of its time.”
Photo by AP.