[3] Maines was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and received her BA in classics with a specialization in ancient science and technology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971.
While researching needlework in late 19th- and early 20th-century women's magazines, Maines encountered what she would argue were highly circumspect advertisements for vibrators.
However, after checking all the internal citations and Maines's own background, the IEEE finally allowed the article to be published in the June 1989 edition of the magazine.
[12] Many of Maines's claims in The Technology of Orgasm have been challenged, notably by classicist Helen King and researchers at the Wellcome Collection.
[15] A central claim in Maines's book—that Victorian physicians routinely used electromechanical vibrators to stimulate female patients to orgasm as a treatment for hysteria—was challenged by Hallie Lieberman and Eric Schatzberg of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
[16] In January 2020, Lieberman wrote an op-ed in The New York Times which drew further attention to Maines' role in promoting the latter widespread myth as fact.
"[18] Maines's next book, Asbestos and Fire: Technological Trade-offs and the Body at Risk, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2005.