Businessmen still tapping Magic Fingers

Eastern Washington residents Russ and Rusty Gill marked the death of John Houghtaling last week by remembering the heyday of the Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, the coin-operated device that’s been part of their lives for 30 years.

Houghtaling, who died Wednesday at age 92, invented the Magic Fingers – an electrical box attached to mattress springs that vibrated them, supposedly for relaxation. After he invented the machine in 1958, it became a fixture in motels across the country.

Starting out of Spokane in the mid-1970s, Russ Gill took over the regional Magic Fingers franchise started by Wade Brown, his late father-in-law.

Gill and his son, Rusty, regularly drove to more than 70 motels across Idaho, Washington and Oregon, collecting quarters placed in the boxes by customers for 15 minutes of mattress-rattling.

At that time they were maintaining more than 1,100 machines and were one of the estimated 175 Magic Fingers franchise operators across the country.

But by the 1990s, many motel chains had discarded the units as unsavory or low-rent.

By 2002 the Wall Street Journal determined the Gills were the last ones in America to operate a motel network of Magic Fingers units.

Rusty Gill, who lives in Newport, Wash., now sells used Magic Fingers units on eBay. They sell for about $40.

His father has just 36 “paying” machines, in the Flamingo Motel in Coeur d’Alene and the Colwell Motor Inn in Ritzville.

Retired at age 62, the elder Gill now leaves his home in Mead to hit the motel circuit only every few months.

“I’d like to sell off the ones I still have out there, to the motel owners. But they won’t let me,” said Russ Gill. “They tell me no, that they have to have them and I have to keep them operating.”

With Houghtaling’s death, Rusty Gill said he’s seen a spike in eBay sales. The Gills still have about 300 Magic Fingers machines in storage for eventual sale.

The devices, despite their age, work fine and require just minor repairs.

“People have said if you put one out in a field and just kept feeding it quarters, it would run for 50 years,” said Russ Gill.