As a salesman, Houghtaling (pronounced “Huff-tail-ing”) was hired to sell beds with a vibrating mechanism. The bed was so expensive the product failed, but Houghtaling thought there was promise in the idea, so he tinkered in his basement to build an inexpensive motor that could be clamped onto an existing bed frame.
He succeeded in 1958, and called the resulting device “Magic Fingers”. But instead of targeting consumers with the idea, he came up with a scheme to get them into motel rooms. “It was probably the first guest-room amenity after the TV, and almost ubiquitous in motels in the 1960s and into the 1970s,” said Ed Watkins, editor of Lodging Hospitality magazine. Motel guests could get about 15 minutes of vibrating massage for a quarter.
By the early 1960s he sold $1 million worth of the shakers to contractors, who also paid back a share of the quarters guests dropped into the machines — on average 8 coins per week per equipped bed, which multiplied out to about $2 million per month. The business slid down in the 1970s as the novelty wore off — and people started breaking into the coin boxes. Houghtaling sold the company off in the 1980s, and died June 17 from a head injury after a fall. He was 92.