Breast Pump - History

History

On June 20, 1854, the United States Patent Office issued Patent No. 11,135 to O.H. Needham for a breast pump. Scientific American (1863) credits L.O. Colbin as the inventor and patent applicant of a breast pump. In 1921-23, engineer and chess master Edward Lasker produced a mechanical breast pump that imitated an infant's sucking action and was regarded by physicians as a marked improvement on existing hand-operated breast pumps, which failed to remove all the milk from the breast. The U.S. Patent Office issued Patent No. 1,644,257 for Lasker's breast pump. In 1956 Einar Egnell published his groundbreaking work, "Viewpoints on what happens mechanically in the female breast during various methods of milk collection". This article provided insight to the technical aspects of milk extraction from the breast. The Egnell SMB breastpump designed through this research is quite robust and many pumps are still in operation today over 50 years after publication.

Read more about this topic:  Breast Pump

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
    —William Faulkner (1897–1962)

    “In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
    —Samuel Butler (1835–1902)