A Real-Life Orgasmatron

Science fiction provides us with many examples of machines that give you instant orgasms: the Orgasmatron from Woody Allen's Sleeper, the orgasm gun in comedy Orgazmo from Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of South Park); the tasp weapon from Larry Niven's novel Ringworld; and the scary pipe organ that makes Barbarella get wiggly. But there are real-world orgasmatrons too, and the maker of one of them is looking for a new crop of volunteers to test a spinal implant that delivers a pleasurable shock directly to your pelvic nerves.

Stuart Meloy, whose spinal implant causes orgasms in most women, has patented the device and tested it on several women and men a couple of years ago. Now he needs to go through another round of tests as he preps the device for FDA approval to treat "female orgasm dysfuntion," defined simply as an inability to have orgasms. Here's a diagram of how it works. A small box about the size of an Altoids tin is attached to two thin wires that snake under your skin and attach to the nerves in your spine responsible for sexual pleasure. Send electricity through the wires, stimulate the nerves, and watch the hot results.

According to an article last week in the Los Angeles Times:

Women who have used the device say they feel as if their clitoris and vagina are actually being stimulated, to quite realistic effect. ("One woman asked me, 'Would it be considered adultery if I gave the remote control to someone other than my husband?' " Meloy says.)

Some volunteers also report fleeting episodes of clenched foot muscles, Meloy says, probably a result of electrical pulses leaving the spine and stimulating nearby motor nerves. (He wonders if the phenomenon might somehow be related to a common orgasm description: "My toes curled.")

And when the device's pulse intensity is cranked up to maximum, Meloy says, some women find their vaginal and rectal muscles squeezing rhythmically in time with the pulses, even before the orgasmic finale.

And then there's the device above, built in the 1970s to measure and study female orgasm. Its inventor, John Perry, writes:

The combination blood-flow sensor ("photoplethysmograph") and muscle activity sensor ("electromyograph") was first developed to investigate the mechanisms of sexual arousal. Along the lower edge of the sensor barrel a single longitudinal silver EMG electrode is visible. (Two other long silver electrodes are located at 90 and 180 degrees behind the sensor body.) Above the electrode, the dark circle of a photocell aimed at the vaginal wall is visible. To the left of the photocell, the white base of a miniature incandescent lamp is visible. A five-pin DIN plug was molded into the base. An insertion stop, right, prevents the sensor from going too far into the vagina, and a retaining bulb, left, helps to prevent it from falling out during contractions.

Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.

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