Childbirth can be slow and distressing. Inspired by elephants, a New York City couple designed an electro-mechanical device that accelerates the process. The method is simple: the pregnant woman is strapped on to a circular table; the table is then rotated at high speed.

George Blonsky was a mining engineer. He and his wife, Charlotte, loved children, though they had none. They also loved the Bronx Zoo. One day George happened upon the sight of a pregnant elephant slowly twirling herself in circles, evidently in preparation for delivering a 250lb baby.

The anatomical physics of it galvanised George Blonsky. He performed a simple technical analysis, and then wondered, as engineers will, whether his insight could somehow benefit humanity. Yes, he decided, it could.

In their patent application, Blonsky and Blonsky explained the need: "In the case of a woman who has a fully developed muscular system and has had ample physical exertion all through the pregnancy, as is common with all more primitive peoples, nature provides all the necessary equipment and power to have a normal and quick delivery. This is not the case, however, with more civilised women, who often do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles needed in confinement."

Therefore, wrote Blonsky and Blonsky, they would provide "an apparatus which will assist the under-equipped woman by creating a gentle, evenly distributed, properly directed, precision-controlled force, that acts in unison with and supplements her own efforts".

The Blonskys explained: "The foetus needs the application of considerable propelling force." They knew how to supply that propelling force.

The rest of their patent - eight very detailed pages altogether - specifies exactly how to do it. The design includes some 125 basic components, including bolts, brakes, wing nuts, a massive concrete floor slab, a vari-speed vertical gear motor, a speed reducer, more wing nuts, sheaves, stretchers, shafts, thigh members, a butt plate, aluminium ballast water boxes, more wing nuts, pillow clamps, a girdle member, and some additional wing nuts.

On November 9 1965, the Blonskys were granted US Patent 3,216,423, for an Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force. The drawings, as well as the text, are a revelation. The Patent Office has them online at http://tinyurl.com/jd4ra and I urge you - if you have any shred of curiosity in your body - to look them up.

For conceiving what appears to be the greatest labour-saving device ever invented, George and Charlotte Blonsky won the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize in the field of Managed Health Care.

Subsequently, the Ig Nobel board of governors heard from several women in the final stages of pregnancy. All had much the same message. "I know most people think that machine is funny, and so do I," said one. "But, after nine months, I'm really bored and tired of waiting for this birth. If that machine were available, I'd use it."

· Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com) and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize