Mr. Magic Fingers Has Died At 92

John Houghtaling died last week. The name might not mean much to you, but those of you who have enjoyed a cheap motel bed and a pocketful of quarters will surely remember the man who invented The Magic Fingers.

Magic Fingers was invented back in the 1950's and at its peak almost 250,000 motel rooms across the world had beds installed with the vibrating motor. That is 250,000 men a night who were convinced that feeding a couple of quarters into the machine would ignite that spark lost in his relationship. I say men here, because lets face it, only a guy would think to himself, hey, I know just the thing to add a little spice into the relationship and think the answer was a motor at the end of the bed.

Each quarter got you 15 minutes of fun and at its peak that fun was generating Mr. Magic Fingers about $2M a month. That is a whole bunch of quarters. The fad kind of lost its way when people started breaking into the machines and stealing the money. This is when reading an obituary can be pretty interesting. It turns out that Mr. Houghtaling came up with a solution and back in 1976 installed magnetic card strip readers to use instead of coins. It sounds like he was the first guy to come up with this, but apparently he must have not patented or something because his son said that his dad never made a dime off the invention. Whenever I think of a vibrating bed I am reminded of the scene in Vacation when the bed goes out of control. I wasn't able to find that clip, but this one from Golden Girls will do just fine.

I wish that I could say I had used a vibrating bed, but the few times I actually saw them, they didn't work. I guess I will spend the rest of the day on eBay and see if I can find one for the futon.