Engineer Builds Baby Walker (Sep, 1939)
Filed under: Just Weird — @ 10:20 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1939
| Buy on Ebay
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1939
| Buy on Ebay
This looks like some sort of baby torture device.
“Mach schnell baby! Mach schnell!!”
Engineer Builds Baby Walker
To teach his young son to walk, a Swiss engineer built the curious apparatus shown above. Pairs of wooden arms are strapped at one end to the infant’s legs and at the other to the legs of an adult, so that the latter can control the baby’s leg movements. A harness connected to a pulley on an overhead wire holds the child upright while it is taking its first steps.
This is one of those times when the old-fashioned way seems to make a lot more sense.
Comment by Blurgle — April 23, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
That looks just horribly wrong.
Comment by Anne — April 24, 2008 @ 1:15 am
Wow. The kid seems to be really enjoying this.
Comment by Craig — April 24, 2008 @ 1:26 am
oh crazy funny swiss
Comment by Latente — April 24, 2008 @ 5:33 am
Speaking as an engineer and a mother — some engineers should clearly have their degrees revoked.
Beyond the WTF of strapping your kid into this, what do you do when they sit down or fall over backwards?
Comment by Erica — April 24, 2008 @ 7:11 am
Erica- you fall over too, obviously. Possibly forward, on top of the baby.
I wonder if he scaled this up to teach the kid how to drive.
Comment by nlpnt — April 24, 2008 @ 8:41 am
And what does Mom do? Take baby steps to avoid ripping the child’s legs off?
When my daughter, a late walker, became comfortable hanging on to things and walking that way, a friend suggested giving her a wooden kitchen spoon to hold.
She carried it horizontally like a bar to hold on to, and kept her balance. That was all she needed to get the hang of unassisted walking.
Comment by Rick Auricchio — April 24, 2008 @ 10:55 am
Run, Mom, run! Train that kid for the 1958 Olympics!
(Erica, more likely that mother will trip first, breaking kid’s legs. Explain that to social workers.)
Comment by Jim Devlin — April 24, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
You could use this device to teach the child to walk really fast.
Comment by Myles — April 25, 2008 @ 11:03 am
Gotta see them doing starjumps :O
Comment by Cass1dy — April 29, 2008 @ 9:35 pm