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Normally when we post patents, they're late 19th/early 20th century objects for interfacing with vaginas. This is neither, but we're going to tell you about it anyway. This is the Apparatus For Facilitating The Birth Of A Child By Centrifugal Force, patented in 1965. 176 comments
 As is the format for patent documentation, George B and Charlotte E Blosnky begin by explaining why the world needs a birth centrifuge. Apparently the foetus needs "considerable propelling force" to leave the body. The Blonskys say that "Primitive peoples" have the muscle and skeletal system to supply this while "Civilized Women" do not, so it's a racist birth centrifuge, too. Okay I was enjoying this thread immensely and barely holding in a lot of laughs but this comment was the final straw and I can't stop giggling. The way the contraption is supposed to work is this: "When the gynecologist decides that the most opportune time for childbirth has arrived", you are strapped supine to a stretcher at the head, legs and feet. The stretcher is then loaded up into the centrifuge. It then gets spun round and round at an alarming speed until the baby comes out. @vagina_museum ETA: I suppose it's too much to hope that they provided supporting evidence for the 2-8G estimates (like 'We evaluated the velocity of newborns in our ideal target group and identified that the average baby entered the world between 20 and 78 m/s. Also, midwives in Category A wear modified baseball gloves').  @violet @vagina_museum The Blonskys are cagey about the appropriate speed at which a foetus would be "dislodged" (their word). At one point they mention around 8gs, then conclude that would probably be a bit much and suggest starting at around 2gs and going up from there. In a supine position, a human would black out with in a few minutes at 2gs, and quicker at a faster speed. The Blonskys are well aware of this, and that the birth will have to be achieved by centrifuging alone. Now, they're probably cagey about the appropriate speed at which to spin a baby out straight out of a uterus because this science has never been tested. In fact, it's hard to find any data as to whether g-forces even *can* make anything shoot out of the pelvis. To prove or refute the concept of the birth centrifuge, can any astronauts, pilots or others who have had high-g training tell us if they let out a bit of wee or poo when you were in the centrifuge?  You might be worrying what happens to the baby once sufficient centrifugal force is applied. Don't worry, it doesn't go flying across the room! There's a net to catch it. There's even a little bit of cotton wadding to prevent it being slammed into any machinery. The net still raises unpleasant questions as a newborn baby's skull bones aren't fused yet so being accelerated into a net probably isn't good for its head. Also, the Blonskys don't tell us what's supposed to happen to the placenta. Does it slam straight into the baby from behind? According to the story behind their design, the Blonskys - husband and wife - had visited the zoo and seen an elephant twirling in circles. A zookeeper explained to them elephants do this before giving birth. Which, by the way, they don't, because centrifugal force isn't necessary for birth. If the Apparatus For Facilitating The Birth Of A Child By Centrifugal Force was in fact some clever piece of art critiquing medicalisation of birth, then the Blonskys played a blinder, as the patent documentation is delivered entirely straight-faced and with huge attention to detail. You can enjoy the full technical specifications of the birth centrifuge here https://patents.google.com/patent/US3216423A/en Unsurprisingly, the birth centrifuge never went into production. The achievements of the Blonskys were recognised in 1999 with a posthumous Ig Nobel Prize for Managed Health Care.  @vagina_museum I notice that the Dublin Science Gallery built a version of this for their ‘Fail Better’ exhibition: https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/failbetter Perhaps their recreation of the Blonsky device could be acquired by the Vagina Museum 😊  @vagina_museum My only explanation for the elephant part of this story is that the poor thing displayed stress behavior caused by the facilities.  @vagina_museum @vagina_museum I wonder if this is where Heinlein got the idea that he used in one of the sections of Time Enough for Love ? @vagina_museum I can’t be the only one sitting here going don’t let the GOP find out about this, they’ll make it mandatory in all hospitals 😬 @LetsBuild @vagina_museum was just thinking this, with hospitals losing doctors cause of abortion laws making it harder to treat pregnant women.  @Burn_this_ @vagina_museum @vagina_museum looks like the creators didn't spend a second thinking about cleaning that thing after use.  @vagina_museum @vagina_museum Having been present for the birth of my child, and seeing my ex suddenly stand and squat to give birth, I can say that gravity does help a bit. But I'm not sure the intersection between "using centrifugal force" and "safe birth" exists. @vagina_museum@masto.ai Wondering if they came out with the idea when trying to take out a stuck asparagus (e.g.) from the can by spining on themselves...  @vagina_museum The Blonskys clearly deserve an award for [Reproductive] Mad Science! Because that is the most deranged pseudo-medical contraption I've heard of from the past century.  @cstross @vagina_museum now I'm thinking how messy a birth in zero g would be.... @vagina_museum the similarities in this and spin launch's design are so much so that I'm almost certain their engineers or lawyers found this patient. Talk about reapplying technologies to different applications. 🤣  @vagina_museum how do they propose to decelerate the new arrival at the end of this procedure? @simon_brooke @vagina_museum I bet it's a fast runner with a big fishing net. I betcha  Such a machine would be also perfect to squeeze the last drop of ketchup from the bottle 😄  @vagina_museum Among the many crazy things about this we should note that forcing blood into to the lower half of the body would be a great way to kill women should they hemorrhage  @vagina_museum I was not expecting to start the day with the phrase "racist birth centrifuge" but here we are. Thank you for that. :)  @vagina_museum This is the poster child example that you can just patent about anything as long as you comply with novelty and inventive step, but don't expect people to adopt it.    @vagina_museum So where does the catcher stand? "A long fly baby to centre field...." @BackFromTheDud @vagina_museum if you look closely the person giving birth has her legs through what appear to be the handles of a net shopping bag which presumably catches the baby    Childbirth isn't like squeezing a pip out of an orange. Child birth is a sophisticated process between child, mother, and pelvic bones where the child has to twist to fit through and the pelvic bone is stretched slowly to do so. This device would have killed both child and mother. Whomever filed this patent evidently didn't care about patient safety. Or patient survival. @vagina_museum I don't know, I reckon after three day's labour my wife would have been willing to give the Blonsky Apparatus a whirl. (I think the net looks like the crucial component to get right - too weak, and you need to introduce a circle of baseball fielders; too elastic and you risk firing the baby back inside.) @vagina_museum @vagina_museum what would the mother be thinking during the process, especially with the blood being pulled from her head? @vagina_museum Looks like a combination of a water boarding tourture table and a record player. @PNeurona @vagina_museum m'ha deixat en xoc. No puc creure que patentessin això sense adonar-se que era una màquina de tortura 🤨 @vagina_museum in NINETEEN SIXTY WHAT??? i’d heard of this before but not that it was so RECENT jfc 😅  @vagina_museum this seems seriously dangerous. Wonder who will be ready to adopt this for delivery. How does this address complecations.     @vagina_museum How I imagine the design group went. Science guy 1: What about centrifugal force? Science Guy 2: ?? You mean, we just swing that bitch in circles faster and faster until the child flies out? Goddammit man, I'm in.  @vagina_museum    @vagina_museum The more I read about this story, the more shocking it gets. They built a replica of the machine using the original designs in Trinity College Dublin 10 years ago, for their Science Gallery. Here's an article about it https://improbable.com/2014/02/21/the-blonsky-centrifugal-birthing-device-in-dublin/?amp=1  I adapted this brilliant invention to help men having far better erections (just before fainting) a few years ago. Patent LOL-2115611-11-2016 See @penis_museum@hotmasto.sex @vagina_museum  @vagina_museum I have no idea how humanity has survived for the last 60 years in absence of such a clearly necessary device. @vagina_museum it was featured recently in Joe Scott's video on weirdest patents granted in US 😃  @vagina_museum 🙈 I had seen this before and it's been haunting me since. It's so awful on so many levels. 🤮 Killing the child and either killing or permanently disabling the mother. Completely ignorant and yet so sure of themselves.   @vagina_museum That contraption reminds me a little of the spinning android duplicator from Star Trek episode "What are little girls made of?"  @vagina_museum one can only imagine what device they might have made if bungee cords existed at the time. @vagina_museum “Darling, I’ve solved childbirth. Please be a dear and refrain from going into labour until I’ve finished the prototype; as I would like you be the first to test it.” Dictated but not read.  @vagina_museum having got three kids out of me without the aid of centripetal force, i appreciate the effort by this mad inventor, honestly. the technique where they knocked the mom out entirely also sounded pretty great. but i'm glad scientists double-check what actually works and what's safe for mom and baby.  @vagina_museum Somehow I don't want my pregnant partner and our newborn pulling G's in the centrifuge. I'm old fashioned that way.  @vagina_museum Today's moment of gratitude is for the FDA, for making sure I wasn't born at 8 Gs into a net and then immediately flattened by placenta. Thanks, FDA! @vagina_museum the apparatus is missing a net to catch the baby before it collides with neighboring walls.  @vagina_museum I guess what surprises me most is that this harebrained contraption is A) from 1965 and B) won something - ok, it was an Ig Nodel Prize, but still... 1999 must have been a quiet year.     @vagina_museum Old and busted: breathing exercises for pain management New hotness: breathing exercises for handling G-loc @vagina_museum I suspect that advances in rocketry have made this invention moot, assuming there are no questions about citizenship when the baby is expelled while in low-earth orbit? |
Gregory's Server
You may be reading this and wondering "Surely this isn't an elaborate centrifuge designed to make the baby fly out? Surely?"
That's exactly what it is (and stop calling us Shirley).