Once, about a year ago, I was walking home from work and saw a mother with an infant in a carrier on her back and a toddler leashed to her hand. The toddler was sitting down and yelling "NO NO NO NO" as loud as he could and the poor mother was trying to get him to stand back up and keep walking. As I was silently sympathizing with her, the infant on her back starting crying & screaming and began to repeatedly hit her on the back of the head. The most depressing part was that the woman didn't even look like she noticed the 20 pound monster on her back that was savaging her head and eardrums. My heart went out to her and when I got home, I kissed my girlfriend and thanked her for not wanting kids.
It solidly reinforced my opinion that children are non-stop problem creating human larva whose sole purpose is to drain your bank account, ruin your sleep, projectile vomit on you, and poop. Always with the poop. Again, not that I'm a father myself. But should the day ever come where I am put in charge of my own little dirt child, the US patent database has a wealth of great parenting ideas. I humbly present the following three. And if you got the Jonathan Swift allusion in the title, good work.
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So you're the parent of a young larval human who has just learned to walk, and that might be a problem. You are a busy adult human with real adult human things to do. Maybe you live on the top floor of an asbestos factory and all the stairwells are unlocked for easy infant access. Maybe you rent a Dickensian tenement and the four other families you share it with have vowed to eat your child if they stray into their side of the room again. Or maybe the shirtless poolboy just arrived and you just mixed up a bunch of daiquiris to ply him with.
What ever your situation, the Infant Restraining Device, US 2,650,590 to Leroy and Dorthy Moore has the solution. The Moores feel your pain and have devised a way to keep that damn troublemaker in his crib/pen/cage. Now to be fair to them, it is not as terrible as the name suggests. It is two buttoned ankle bracelets linked by an elastic strap. It is intended to allow the child to walk normally, but not allow them to throw one leg over the side of the crib for escape. Why haven't you seen these for sale at Babies 'R' Us? The only reasonable explanation is that the diabolical fiends in the crib industry have intimidated the Moore family into submission rather than fix their defective and dangerous crib designs.
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So that brings us to entry number two: US 1,448,235 to Emma Read, entitled Portable Baby Cage. This clearly follows in the grand tradition of Jonathan Swift as well as the Dickensian theme of the Infant Restraining Device. Issued in 1922, it addresses the problem that "babies and young children, who at the present are being raised in large apartments, are not going outdoors for their proper fresh air and exercise."
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Emma goes on: "With these facts in view it is the purpose of the present invention...to be suspended upon the exterior of a building adjacent an open window, wherein the baby or young child may be placed."
In other words, this is a tin roofed, chicken wire walled cage that is cantilevered outside your window like an air conditioner for your baby to sit in. I won't go into an analysis of the support structure for holding it in place, mainly because I don't think it is necessary. This is clearly an incredible idea that has been systematically suppressed by the special interest groups of Big Infant.
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Finally, there is this. The Holy Grail of patents. A crown jewel of such staggering genius that it will likely never be equaled. US 3,216,423 to George and Charlotte Blonsky, entitled Apparatus For Facilitating The Birth Of A Child By Centrifugal Force. Anyone with a passing understanding of physics should be able to grasp this one. A rotating bed is placed within a ring with the woman's head at the center. The bed has hand grips, a chest restraint, stirrups, and a net between the woman's legs. You can see the net (element number 97) best in the figure to the right.
The two balls with the bars between them that pass over the woman's face in fig. 1 to the right isn't a mask or something. It is a centrifugal governor that smooths and controls the rotation of the device via centrifugal deflection. That means it is steam powered! Fig. 2 to the left shows that they are actually quite a ways above the woman's face. Fig. 2 also shows the wonderful steampunk chains and pulleys underneath the table. Fig. 3 below shows the governor deflecting due to rotation as well as a simply scandelous shot of the fetus-catching net. | |
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The operation is pretty simple: The woman is placed so that her womb is radially offset from the center of rotation. So when the table is turned, outwardly directed force is generated on the fetus. Think of it like giving birth by doing an upright bungee jump (I should file an application for that!). The enclosed text to the left reads: "The bottom or closed end of the net is lined with a thick wad of cotton. When the fetus leaves the mother's vagina and lands on the cotton bed in the net, its weight, as a result of the rotation of the machine, exerts a radial centrifugal force of the bottom of the elastic net." This automatically stops the rotation.
It goes on: "A suitable hand brake is provided adjacent to the controller to enable the operator to stop quickly the inertial rotation of the machine after the current is switch off either by the new born child, or by the operator on instruction from the gynecologist in charge of the operation, or by suitable automatic means which come into operation when the rate of revolution of the machine, either through mistake or malfunction, exceeds the amount considered safe for the particular patient thereon."
Finally, there is a table that correlates the RPM of the machine to the acceleration applied to the fetus. The acceleration is measured in both ft/sec^2 as well as G-force. The middle RPM range is 1.04 revolutions per second, or 4 G's of force. The space shuttle undergoes 3 G's during both launch and re-entry, for comparison. An F-1 car tops out at 5-6 G's. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?!
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