Virtual Museum of Sex

The Museum of Sex, with curated exhibits at its flagship Fifth Avenue museum in Manhattan, launched its “Virtual Museum of Sex”. Among the four inaugural exhibits showing online, US Patent Office Sex Inventions:

The CAD illustrations in this interactive installation were taken from seventeen patent applications submitted between 1862 and 1984 to the United States Patent Office, the federal agency dedicated to the administration and protection of intellectual property. The devices depicted here represent over a century of American sexual technological innovation, and offer a unique look into the history of American ideas about sex and sexuality. Variously designed for pleasure, protection, analysis, and restraint, these devices not only demonstrate evolving technological capabilities, they reveal changing beliefs about the body, emotional and physical health, and the goals and limits of sexual practice.

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