Penis measuring device

Apparently rulers are a crude way to measure your penis. I found a patent for, yes, a "penile measuring device." I think the best way to describe this thing is to quote directly from the patent:

"A volumetric measuring device for measuring a body part. The device includes a fluid container filled with fluid. The fluid container has a body part opening for permitting the insertion of a body part and a displaced fluid opening for permitting the flow of fluid that has been displaced as the result of inserting the body part. A watertight barrier covers the body part opening and maintains a watertight seal over the body part opening while the body part is being inserted. The volumetric measurement is determined by measuring the amount of displaced fluid after the insertion of the body part through the body part opening. In a preferred embodiment, the body part being measured is an erect penis."

You can read the actual patent, #7147609, courtesy of Google Patents. The claims are fun to read, and you must look at the drawings, particularly Figs. 12-15. So there you go! Read more about it here and here - yes, that really is The Washington Post!

(No, that picture on the right is not the device in question - that's just a silly toy you can buy here for a mere £1.17. Yes, that's Pounds Sterling.)

Update: I took another look at this patent, and then tried Google's search mechanism for more of this sort of thing. You can do it too! Just go to the Google Patent page, and type [penis]* - or your favorite body part - into the search box. The first hit comes up with a patent that begins with the following startling claim:

"What is claimed is:
1. A penis erection assisting device comprising sealing means for sealingly accommodating a penis therein, said sealing means having an opening at one end thereof to insert the penis, extracting means connected to said sealing means for extracting air within said sealing means, an expandable circular bag member provided at the opening of said sealing means, and exhaling means for supplying extracted air by said extracting means into said circular bag member to expand said circular bag member..."

"Sealingly"? How many times is "sealing" used in that paragraph?

* Some time ago, Google tried to instil a new standard for quoting text that had to be inserted, for example, into a search box. This would replace the clumsy "xxx" (without the quotes) nonsense that we often see. The idea was to use square brackets to indicate that what is inside the brackets is what should be inserted, and not the brackets themselves. I kinda like this notion, so am using it here.