Were any sex machines made before the Victorian era?

by [deleted]

I've googled and were able to find just two images seemingly depicting sex machines that old.

The first is suposedly from the medieval era, and is a woving machine with a dildo on it. According to the writer of the blog I took the image from, it was used by low class women while attending to their job. I find the image very dubious since I searched for it online and didn't find anything that proved it's indeed from ancient times.

The second image is one that popped up here on Reddit and is said to have come from a museum in Spain.

The images are below:

https://escrevergay.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/p_20160330_121014.jpg?w=980

http://imgur.com/z4NaDSd

AnnalsPornographie

I assume from the two examples you linked that you're largely limiting this to Europe.

By and large this comes down to how you define "sex machine". Does it require moving parts? The items you linked to would fulfill that requirement. Does it need electricity? Then you'd be looking probably at the earliest vibrators that we're invented in the 1800s. Or does just a regular dildo count as a machine? It wasn't abnormal to hear them described in that way in the 1500s sex literature.

However the best resource we have for sex machines in general is housed in the Sex Machine Museum in Prague, which is a great visit if you ever find yourself in the area! The earliest examples they have, much like yours, date from the 1500s, not the medieval era. We don't have much history or literature discussing these items.

Without knowing more about the two items that you've linked to I would suspect that they also came from around that time period and would have been made in France. This is also about the time we start hearing more and more about dildoes (see Rochester's Signeur Dildo and Nashes Valentine). There was also a heavy interest (one might say obsession) in automatons and wooden machinery and I wouldn't be surprised if someone thought these items up on a whim.

If you're interested in sex machines in general I recommend Levins book in American Sex Manchines as being a fun introduction to the topic.