This is a very interesting and well put together, deeply researched article. We encourage every sex doll fan to get familiar with this article covering the history of a sex doll and how it is inevitably connected with our culture. 

Sex dolls are nothing new, they have simply evolved so is it possible we are now entering the golden era of sex dolls and sexbots? 

A year before his death, French philosopher Rene Descartes was invited by Queen Christina of Sweden to be her private tutor. In 1649, he boarded a Stockholm-bound ship in the company of a young woman whom he presented as his daughter, Francine. No one saw her again after the start of the voyage, and the suspicions of the crass, superstition-ridden sailors rose to such heights that they broke into Descartes’ cabin in order to see her for themselves. There they found a life-sized female doll made of leather and metal, whose resemblance to a real girl was so perfect that they were terrified and threw it overboard.

Anthony Ferguson, who recounts this peculiar story in his 2010 book “The Sex Doll: A History,” admits that it may be apocryphal (as well as creepy). Still, Descartes is known to have experimented with the creation of various automatons, and also to have had a daughter, although he was never married. The daughter’s name was indeed Francine, but she died nine years before the journey to Sweden, at the age of 5.

There’s no knowing exactly what the master of logic was planning to do with his doll, but the sailors who tossed it into the sea knew of at least one possibility: In the 17th century, the great age of exploration, when ocean-crossing vessels were embarking on ever-longer journeys, sailors began taking with them a prototype of the inflatable doll. Termed by the French “dames de voyage,” these were indeed devices that resembled a human female, made of fabric attached to bamboo poles, wearing a dress and available to those seeking to vent their lust.