1920's Technology at its Best

Chapter 1

During the pillaging of my Aunt's house, one object of note I shall tell you all about today. It was an electrical device with an industrial power cord. It was about the size of a modern blow dryer. It had a motor housing about 8 inches long, 3 inches in diameter. The housing had holes in it and when the item was activated, air would come through. The handle was conical with a flat end, much smaller then the motor housing itself.

My other Aunt. (Mother's sister still alive) Took up this antique artifact. Found the power switch and activated it. Air began to flow through the holes and the power of the motor was pretty weak. After investigating, I found that it had a throttle. When throttled to maximum power, the air was flowing stronger and the motor was actually making the thing shake. My Aunt asked, what kind of machine would need this much power? As a footnote to be silly and try and get the thing to sell, she would demonstrate it's use by giving patrons back massages. This happened until somebody finally bought it for $10.

Chapter 2

More recently my sister gave a phone call to my mother. She said she saw the device on an antique show. She said it was listed as a back massager, but they alluded to other more dirty uses for the device. (I wondered why the power cord didn't enter the device through the handle). She also said that this thing was worth way more than $10. (As I'm sure many of the things in the house were)

In short, the recap is this. My aunt was holding onto the business end of a 1920's vibrator and rubbing it all over the clothes of everybody in the house that day. Myself included. I guess that's why they called them the roaring 20's.