Monday, August 25, 2008

Of Course!

As a way of illustrating the two worlds I am currently inhabiting, I present for your enjoyment "Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force"

Yes, that is a patent for a giant disk that you strap the laboring woman into so that you can then spin her until the baby shoots out. (You can read the whole thing here.) Noticeably missing from the apparatus is a space for the doctor. Also notice that the illustration has the woman topless, probably so you can get the best mental image of what that looks like when it gets really spinning. I'm not quite sure if this is an actual invention or some sort of weird metaphor for how they felt about women and childbirth in the early 1960's. I imagine the inventive process went something like this:

Dr. Blonsky: Hmmmmmm. How can I make the childbirthing process better . . . ? Wait..... Wait..... Eureka! We can make labor EASIER by taking women straining with the pains of labor and SPINNING THEM on a GIANT disk! The FASTER we get them going, the EASIER it gets! I'm a GENIUS!

Mrs. Blonsky: Ummmm, dear, don't you think that spinning the women during labor to the point that significant G-forces are applied to the emerging fetus may make them, well, slightly more uncomfortable?

Dr. Blonsky: Nonsense! We can just strap her down on her feet, legs, chest, neck and face!! We don't even need a doctor there! We'll just put a net in the operative region there and have a kill switch set up so when the net gets a load full of baby, the motor turns off! It's fool-proof!

Mrs. Blonsky (Shakes her head and goes to the nearest phone to schedule a hysterectomy)

I can't imagine why this prime piece of American ingenuity never took off. I think it must have been the marketing. So we'll have special recognition for the commenter who suggests the best name for that monstrosity. I'd have to go with either "Centri-Fetal Force" the "Nur-Sling", or, for the descriptively minded, the "Vagi-Spew"

Awesome.

(Hat tip to Rob for finding this little gem)

1 comment:

Rob-not-Bob said...

I don't think I've ever laughed that hard in my adult life. Maybe this only funny to patent attorneys, but I just can't contain my utter delectation at the thought of some whack-job coughing up the coin to have an attorney write this thing up.

And the drawings... priceless.