1475 Fat Shaker

I walked through my health club the other day amazed at all the new machinery. From treadmills with built-in TVs to stair climbers actually shaped like stairs, we invest a huge amount of inventive ingenuity in crafting machines to duplicate, um, ordinary motion.
Sure, walking on a treadmill watching pictures of the countryside is a lot more warm and comfortable than actually walking in the country. But the stair climber machine that looks like a set of indoor stairs? There’s a real flight of indoor stairs just 20 feet away in my club. And no one was using it to go up to the indoor walking track above. Must be for the same people who park as close as they can to the main entrance of the club. Wouldn't want to walk across any extra parking lot and get exercise...
Maybe the fake stair machine has an escalator setting.
I was reminded of the old strap-shaker machines in health clubs from the fifties. Folks would stand on this platform inside a 3 foot loop of a 5-inch wide strap of canvas. The machine would then jiggle the strap. As the folks were standing in the loop leaning on the strap, the strap would jiggle them too.
The easy way to shake off calories. You'd walk into a club and all these folk would be jiggling to beat the band. I guess the thought was that if you only kept the fat in motion it would melt away. Maybe some sort of friction-induced heat rendering process, like simmering bacon.
I just wonder how many folks died of dislodged kidneys. Or ruptured spleens.
"Is there any hope doctor?"
"Sorry Sir, it looks like your wife has acute pancreatic mush. And diabetes too.
She shook loose her Islets of Langerhans..."
America, ya gotta love it.