Contemporary peep shows, featuring video taped or live performances of sexual activity, developed on the heels of several hundred years of interest in optical principles, the construction of novel, very small spaces, and apparent human fascination with the particulars of these settings. The history of today's peep shows might even be much older. Certainly, examples of very small private meal cubicals (often associated with licentious behavior), buskers and tented tableaus, traveling entertainers with all manners of portable containers offering the entrepreneur control and the consumer a sense of security, are mentioned across continents and ages. Today's manifestations exhibit the presence of several particular circumstances: new and cheap materials, changes in public mores and the ability to regulate human behavior, and rapid changes and improvements in technology.

As science became the pastime of leisured gentlemen in the 1700s and through the early quarter of the 1800s (when...