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I have read the story if Miss Shilling a couple of times now. What I cannot place in historical context is whether the name “Miss Shilling’s orifice” is supposed to be a dirty joke or not. I am certain that the innovation was taken very seriously, but was the name given to it because she was a woman/was there innuendo in it or was the language sufficiently different then that this was a purely technical term?

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> whether the name “Miss Shilling’s orifice” is supposed to be a dirty joke or not.

You are clearly not British, otherwise you would recognise the rule that no entendre must be left un-doubled.

Amusingly, double entendres, common in Britain, would probably cause those in the West Coast US to panic for fear of being perceived sexist. In Britain (home of the panto [1]), we just smile childishly...... and maybe add a 'fnarr fnarr' for good measure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime#Performance_conventi...

The double entendre was probably not accidental. Another comment here indicates it was called the same thing with even stronger language on a regular basis.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27215505

There is also this line in the article:

The question remains as to what Shilling herself thought of the dubious term “Miss Shilling’s orifice.”

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