10 Hugely Ridiculous Patents

Inventor: Joe W. Armstrong

Patent number: 6293874

Issue Date: Sep 25, 2001

Are you lazy and unmotivated? Do you have an innocent masochistic fetish but are unable to find willing partners? The Self Spanking machine might be the asskicking device you have been waiting for. This arrangement requires no external power source, just some rotation of the crank and your butt at the right place. So get the machine and enjoy limitless amounts of posterior pleasure.

Inventor: Thetlord Corporation (Ann Arbor, MI)

Patent number: 3593345

Issue date: Jul 1971

This “self-contained recirculating toilet system” basically attempts to filter out the excrement from the toilet bowl and returns the still brown liquid to the tank. Although it might find some usage in places where water is scarce, installing this device in your toilet will provide you with a flourishing colony of bacteria topped by some fine aroma.

Inventor: Lucy L. Barmby

Patent number: 4344424

Issue date: Aug 17, 1982

A year before Thomas Harris created Hannibal Lecter, a Californian inventor filed a patent for an Anti-Eating Facemask for the cannibalistic psychiatrist.  Once worn, this device can be locked with a padlock preventing removal. Other applications include un-humane treatment of obesity and as a defensive weapon during a zombie apocalypse.

Inventor: Setsuko Borman

Patent number: 7090268

Issue date: Aug 15, 2006

Don’t get us wrong. This invention might actually be useful but it is still a stick with a bag at the end. As we learned at school, inventors are supposed to be heroes who change human life for the good but this honor is becoming increasingly irrelevant these days. I think now its time I patent my matchstick sharpening algorithm for maintenance of dental hygiene.

Inventor: Stanley Valinksi

Patent number: 1392095

Issue date: Sep 1921

In an age of economic recession and civil disorder, securing the banking industry against all threats external and internal is of utmost importance. The Man Catching Tank is an automotive suit of armor cum law enforcing device that can be used to grab wannabe John Dillingers. The watchman can sit and sweat in the tank all day, breathing and observing through the various peepholes until someone shouts HANDS UP! Even if it fails to clasp the crook in a deadly embrace, the mere sight of a huge metal thing moving towards him is sure to set the bowels loose. 

Inventor: Ellen E. Perkins

Patent number: 875845

Issue date: 1908

When your grandparents tell you that life was tough when they were your age, they are making an understatement. It must have been plain horrible. Just imagine the sole purpose of your existence taken away from you. This device does exactly that – prevent you from masturbating. In the inventor’s own words, “It is a deplorable but well known fact that one of the most common causes of insanity, imbecility and feeble mindedness, especially in youth is due to masturbation or self abuse”. The virtue boosting arrangement also features a perforated plate to urinate through, effectively blocking all avenues of pleasure and escape for your neglected genitilia. 

Inventor: Takeda et al.

Publication number:US 2010/0009762 A1

Your days of getting on all fours to let your kid take a horsey ride are over.  A substantial investment in a Wii and a Horse Riding Simulator will ensure that your kid never has to go out into those pedo-infested, crime-ridden playgrounds and do anything real. The device features a number of pressure sensors which feed movements into a Wii console to control the “horse”. As absurd as it sounds, the idea does open a Pandora’s Box of potential “riding devices”, some of which I would definitely pre-order.

Inventors: George and Charlotte Blonsky

Patent number: 3216423

Issue date: Nov 1963

This apparatus is an attempt to ease childbirth by clamping the laboring mother in a rotating device. With the poor woman tied to a medieval Catherine wheel and rotating like an astronaut in a G-Force test, the centrifugal forces are supposed to the ease the delivery because, as the inventor puts it, modern women do not have the opportunity to develop the vaginal muscles needed to propel the baby out.

Inventor: Thomas Cane

Patent number: 5523741

Issue date: Jun 4, 1996

If your kid is of above average intelligence and is having none of your “behave or Santa won’t come” threats, here is a novel invention which will dispel all his doubts about the existence of Santa Claus, Angels, God etc. All you need is to strategically place the futuristic stocking near the chimney and wait for the intruder to inadvertently trigger it. Upon waking up and finding all the cool presents and a glowing Santa alarm, his faith is sure to be cemented.

Inventor: Markus Donald Herrema

Patent number: 6982161

Issue date: Jan 3, 2006

If factory farming, artificial insemination, force feeding, injecting antibiotics and eating all digestible parts of an animal was not enough, now it is time that we take away their freedom to fart. The battery operated “ruminant animal methane” collector features various pipes, capsules and ridges to route the flatulence into cylinders. You might test the efficiency of this device yourself by putting it on after a large meal of beans and radishes.