You’ll be tempted to look this one up to be convinced it’s not made up.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent for a toy rocket powered by flatulence.
That’s right. U.S. Patent No. 6,055,910 is for a “toy gas-fired missile” that is prepared for takeoff by the operator placing “the inlet tube with its valve open adjacent to his anal region from which a colonic gas is discharged.”
After being loaded, “[t]he ignitor is then activated to explode the mixture in the chamber and fire the missile into space.”
The “Status of the Prior Art” section of the patent offers a dissertation on flatulence, including way TMI in the form of revelations that a normal individual produces 400-600 ml of flatus per day and that the major components, in descending odor, er, order, are: nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and oxygen. The odor-causing ingredients are sulfide, skatole, indole, volatile amines, and short-chain fatty acids.
Why is this invention needed? For consumer safety, of course.
The inventors offer the invention as a safer alternative to the “popular practice” of “ignition of one’s own flatus” by lit match or candle, or a cigarette lighter. Of course, “[a] major drawback” of this practice is the “hazardous coupling of fire, combustible gases and inebriated participants.” Serious burn reports are not uncommon, according to the patent application, “especially … when the participants remove their clothing.”
Accordingly, “[i]n view of the foregoing, the main object of this invention is to provide a safe toy which exploits combustible properties of flatus to fire a toy missile into space.”
— U.S. Patent No. 6,055,910, May 2, 2000. Thanks to David Barman.
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