An article I’m supposed to be writing sent me back to reacquaint myself with the ineffable delights of David Levy’s Love and Sex with Robots. Wherein, Strangers, you will find gems like this:
“Clockwork vibrators, for example, tended to run down rather quickly, and often just at the moment when the woman needed them most, while a stem-driven vibrator invented in the United States in 1869 was inconvenient for doctors to use because they repeatedly had to shovel coal into its boiler.”

Yes.