The vibrator was invented by Joseph Mortimer Granville, an English physician, who first patented the electromechanical vibrator in the late 1880s. His invention was originally designed as a medical device to relieve muscle aches and pains, primarily for male patients. Granville explicitly cautioned against using it on women for treating hysteria and denied that it was intended to induce female orgasms. The idea that vibrators were commonly used to treat "hysteria" in women is largely a myth without strong historical evidence. The device only became broadly known and marketed for various health and domestic uses later on, and much later still did it become associated explicitly with sexual pleasure.
Credit for early vibrators is also sometimes given to George Taylor, who invented a “real” vibrator in the 1860s, but Granville’s electric vibrator was the first electromechanical model widely documented. Thus, Joseph Mortimer Granville is the key historical figure credited with inventing the electric vibrator as we know it today.
