The History of Breast Pumps and Their Oldest Manufacturer

Breast pumps have been present on out lives for a century and a half. This pump was first discovered by a man named O.H. Needham and the patent was given to him for this invention on June 20th, 1854. However this pump did indeed have its own defects. Physicians later revealed that this hand operated pump couldn’t suck all of the milk because there was still some left on the breast. Throughout the years these pumps started to become better and better. During 1921 to 1923 the engineer Edward Lasker created a mechanical pump for breasts which was considered an improvement to the previous pumps but this one too failed to pump of the milk out of the breast.

The mechanic pumps for breasts powered by batteries or electricity were produced pretty late. These were some interesting pumps to people which mechanically sucked milk in sixty cycles per minute. The results were pretty nice. Other pump’s accessories were invented as time passed by. For example, we can now use bottles to store milk, but this thing wasn’t always common. Milk was kept in bottles but it wasn’t refrigerated or frozen to be used days or weeks later.

Nevertheless, breast pump manufacturers have existed for a pretty long time. A company called ‘Medela’ has been producing these pumps for a period of five decades. It was founded by a person named Olle Larsson in the Swiss city of Zug, and this large company still exists, having thousands of distributors all over the world. They are widely known for their electric pumps which work through rechargeable batteries only. Medela now is a successful distributor on the USA selling pumps for breasts there for a period of more than 20 years. Besides producing breast pumps, they also produce breast feeding related products such as bottles, soft wide based nipples for bottles and so on.