The self-kicking machine patent's stated advance is that it never needs resetting

The evidence

1. US Patent 6,293,874 B1, "User-operated amusement apparatus for kicking the user's buttocks", was granted to Joe W. Armstrong of Lenoir, Tennessee on 25 September 2001, on application 09/477,175 filed 4 January 2000. Fourteen claims, seven drawing sheets. Primary examiner Joe H. Cheng, assistant examiner Kim T. Nguyen, attorney Pitts & Brittian, P.C.

   Supports the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

2. The abstract describes "a user-operated and controlled apparatus for self-infliction of repetitive blows to the user's buttocks by a plurality of elongated arms bearing flexible extensions that rotate under the user's control", on a platform "foldable at a mid-section".

   Supports the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

3. Claim 1 requires a crank "positioned at a height thereon which requires the user to bend forward toward said first post while grasping said crank with both hands, to prominently present his buttocks toward said second post", and rotating arms whose "central axis positioned at a height generally level with the user's buttocks". The geometry of the posture is claimed, not merely described.

   Supports the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

4. The patent's stated problem with the prior art is discontinuity. "Prior art devices include individual spanking devices that must be reloaded or reset after each individual spanking action." The object of the invention is an apparatus "designed to inflict repetitive blows on the user without resetting of the apparatus and/or repositioning of the user between blows."

   Context·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

5. The prior art it argues against is fraternal. Six of the eight references cited are patents from 1900 to 1916 — five to De Moulin and one each to Mamaux and Newcomb. The specification singles out US 920,837 to De Moulin, "a device is disclosed for lifting and spanking of the user for secret society initiation ceremonies", with a spring, a lever and a paddle that must be reset after each actuation.

   Context·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

6. Claims 2 and 3 specify what is mounted on the arms — "a pliable paddle" and "a flexible shoe" respectively. The specification adds more options: "paddles (not shown), artificial hands (not shown), or other novelty items such as inflated balloons (not shown)."

   Context·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

7. The apparatus is designed for a specific venue. The platform's subunits are sized "to allow disassembly and partial reassembly of the subunits in differently sized spaces as found at craft fairs, county fairs, exhibition halls, and circuses", and claim 11 covers "a display sign detachably connected to said platform" — the banner marked MESSAGE in the figures.

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S1

8. The specification contemplates instrumentation: "a visual display in the form of a LCD display can connect to the drive train and can provide the rotational speed of rotating arms that strike the user's buttocks, and/or a display of the number of paddles or shoes contacting the user's buttocks B per unit of time."

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S1

9. It is designed to be watched. The platform is built "to support the weight of at least a few people standing on the platform, such as a user and an observer", and an alternative embodiment "allows one user to operate the crank while a second person positions himself to receive a paddling of his buttocks B for entertainment of observers."

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S1

10. The stated benefit is not therapeutic or athletic. "The benefit of the present invention is as an amusement apparatus for entertainment and comic relief."

    Context·strong

    Cited sources:S1

11. The front page records that the term was "extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days", and the specification's federally-sponsored-research statement reads "Not Applicable". No public funding is claimed anywhere in the document.

    Context·strong

    Cited sources:S1

12. The idea did not stop in 2001. US 2006/0094518 A1, "Manually self-operated butt-kicking machine", by J. Reese Leavitt of Melba, Idaho, application 10/977,894 filed 29 October 2004, was published on 4 May 2006 in the same US class 472/51. It is a different machine — a bench with a hole and a boot on a lever beneath it — and it is a published application, not a grant.

    Context·decisive

    Cited sources:S3

13. The lodge-initiation reading of the cited prior art is corroborated by a second author. Leavitt's 2006 application independently describes the same De Moulin patents — 654,611 (1900), 920,837 (1909), 953,411 and 976,851 (1910) — plus Mamaux's 966,935 (1910) as "initiating devices" with a platform and pull handles "which the blindfolded user bends over to lift", used "to surprise and initiate the user for membership into secret societies and fraternities". Two unrelated inventors six years apart read that group of patents the same way.

    Context·strong

    Cited sources:S3

Evidence that cuts the other way

Findings that complicate or argue against the verdict above. They are listed because leaving them out would make the file look stronger than it is.

1. A granted patent is not a built machine. Nothing in the document establishes that this apparatus was ever constructed, and no evidence of a built example was sought or found. The specification describes fairs and circuses as intended venues; that is a design intention stated by the applicant, not a record of an appearance at one.

   Contradicts the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

2. A grant is also not a finding that the idea was new in any everyday sense. The specification's own reference list runs back to 1900 and describes an entire genre of lodge-initiation paddling machines that preceded it by a century. What the examiner allowed was this particular continuously-driven arrangement, which is narrower and more procedural than "someone invented a butt-kicking machine".

   Contradicts the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

3. The 2006 Leavitt document is an application publication, not a patent. Publication at eighteen months is automatic and says nothing about allowability. Whether it was ever granted was not established from any primary record here, and the file therefore makes no claim about its outcome — a distinction worth keeping visible on a file whose whole subject is what a grant does and does not mean.

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S3

What we still don’t know

• Whether the apparatus was ever built. Nothing in the record establishes a constructed example, and none was sought beyond noting its absence. A patent is granted on claims and drawings, not on a working machine, and this one is treated accordingly.
• Whether it was ever exhibited, sold, licensed, or enforced. The specification names craft fairs, county fairs, exhibition halls and circuses as intended venues. That is an intention on paper. No evidence was sought or found that it appeared at any of them.
• Whether it is safe. A machine that swings weighted arms at a stooped person at a user-determined speed raises obvious questions, and this file has not researched any of them. The patent asserts the user controls frequency and force; that is a design assertion, not a safety assessment, and no standard, test, or injury record was consulted.
• Whether the 2006 Leavitt application was ever granted. Not established from any primary record. Secondary sources indicate it was not, and that indication is deliberately not repeated as fact here, because a file about the difference between an application and a grant is the last place to guess at one.
• Whether Joe W. Armstrong is living, and whether the patent is still in force. Neither was researched. Maintenance-fee history was not checked and no expiry date is asserted; nothing in this file depends on either.

Sources

Every source below was read in full before it was cited. Archive snapshots are recorded at research time, because a file whose sources have evaporated is indistinguishable from one that never had any.

1. S1Tier 1Read in full

   US Patent 6,293,874 B1 — User-operated amusement apparatus for kicking the user's buttocks

   Joe W. Armstrong · United States Patent and Trademark Office · 2001-09-25

   The patent itself, retrieved as the USPTO's own thirteen-page scan and read in full — front page, all seven drawing sheets, the complete specification and all fourteen claims. It is the document the claim is about, and it establishes every finding attributed to it here: the parties, the dates, the application number, the classification, both examiners and the attorney, the abstract, the claim language including the required posture and the shoe and paddle dependents, the prior-art argument and the De Moulin discussion, the fairground sizing, the LCD readout, the observer platform, and the stated benefit. Also the source of the image, and the subject of the rights inspection. No archive snapshot is recorded, and that is a finding rather than a gap. The Wayback Machine was queried for this URL and for S3's, and holds no capture of either — where it does hold one of SF-0013's patent PDF, which is how the query is known to work. Creating snapshots would mean writing to a third-party service on the publication's behalf, which is not an action taken unasked. The advisory stands open, and is recorded as open.

   Accessed 2026-07-30Archived copy

2. S2Tier 1Read in full

   Terms of Use for USPTO Websites

   United States Patent and Trademark Office

   The agency's stated rights position: that subject to the limited exceptions at 37 CFR 1.71(d) and (e) and 1.84(s), patent text and drawings are "typically not subject to copyright restrictions"; that not all material on USPTO sites is US government work; that the seal and logo are excluded; and that publication without copyright restrictions "does not give you permission to manufacture or use the invention" — which is directly on point for a file about a machine. It also points to MPEP 608.01(v) on the right to include a copyright or mask work notice in a patent, the provision that makes individual inspection necessary rather than optional. Cited for the licence reasoning only.

   Accessed 2026-07-30Archived copy

3. S3Tier 1Read in full

   US 2006/0094518 A1 — Manually self-operated butt-kicking machine

   J. Reese Leavitt · United States Patent and Trademark Office · 2006-05-04

   A later, independent application in the same US class, retrieved from the USPTO as an eleven-page publication and read in full — front page, five drawing sheets and all five specification pages including its nineteen claims. It establishes two different things. First, bibliography: that it is a patent application publication rather than a grant, its publication number and date, its inventor, its application number and filing date, and its mechanism. Second, and more usefully, its "Description of the Related Art" independently characterises the same prior art SF-0014's subject cites — naming De Moulin's 654,611 (1900), 920,837 (1909), 953,411 and 976,851 (1910) and Mamaux's 966,935 (1910) as initiating devices for "secret societies and fraternities" — which corroborates the reading of that lineage from a second author who is not Armstrong. It also discusses US 6,293,874 directly. Nothing about this application's own outcome is drawn from it, because it does not state one. A note on what is not used. The document lists thirteen "objectives" for the machine, several of which reach into subjects this publication does not cover — corporal discipline in schools and correctional institutions, effigies in election campaigns, military morale, and self-administered "medical therapy". None of that is quoted, summarised, or alluded to anywhere in this file. The citation is confined to bibliography, mechanism, and the prior-art lineage. That restriction was a deliberate editorial decision made after reading the document, and it is recorded here so that it reads as a choice rather than as an oversight.

   Accessed 2026-07-30Archived copy

Checked for circularity: S1 and S2; S1 and S3; S2 and S3 were confirmed not to derive from one another. Two sources that trace back to the same origin are one source, and counting them twice is the most common way a false claim looks well-evidenced.