Saturday, December 08, 2007

Dammit, why didn't I think of this?


Well, here's a fine invention from 1963: a spinning hospital bed that uses centrifugal force to facilitate the birth of a child. I'm not entirely sure how it was supposed to work, but I have a mental picture of a doctor standing at its foot with a catcher's mitt to snag the little goober when it shoots out like a cannon ball.

Google patent search 3216423

3 comments:

chuck said...

Why not just pull G's in an aircraft? Specially fitted surplus Soviet fighters could do the trick. Check EBay, the last one, a Mig 21f, sold for $24,730. For the less adventurous, I think NASA has a large rotating boom.

Charlie Martin said...

I think the whole motion sickness issue is going to be big.

By the way, you should have a look at Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love" in which he does much the same trick, adjusting the artificial gravity to assist in childbirth.

chuck said...

I think the whole motion sickness issue is going to be big.

Yeah, that's probably the case. The whole thing reminds me of a woman I knew who became an astronaut. At that time a Russian study had been published warning of the danger of uterine eversion under high gees, so there she was, sitting in back seat of the jet trainer with the pilot asking if she was going to be OK. Holding up a big cork she announced that she would be fine. But she did admit to throwing up in her glove during the flight.